Dave's Travelogue

Oracle on Linux - hugepage conciderations

2011-04-03T02:02:00.000-07:00

Memory « Oracle Scratchpad This is an interesting article about the significant per process memory overhead of running Oracle on Linux without hugepages:

Upgrade to a 64-bit operating system and a 3GB SGA and you need 8 bytes for each page in the memory map and have 786,432 pages, for a total of 6MB per process.

The principles are explained very clearly in this article, but the key thing is that this overhead can build up quickly:

They should be using ”huge pages” (a.k.a large pages) for memory mapping. I can’t remember whether their platform supported 1MB or 2MB pages, but even at 1MB per page that would be 3,072 pages which means 24KB per process, for a total of 7.9 MB – reclaiming most of 2GB, which could go straight into the SGA, targeted at the buffer cache.

Subnet Masks and Subnetting

2010-12-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

I haven't work very much previously with network configuration but I am looking at more and more RAC issues recently.

I have started reading up to: Pro Oracle Database 10g RAC on Linux

This is a very good book, I have seen Julian present at an Oracle SIG before, and was rather baffled by the advanced RAC issues he tackled (I was a newbie DBA at the time). Still he had lots of enthusiasm and I have since read a number of presentation online.

Anyway while reading up about I decided I needed a refresher on the background network concepts:

The "Subnet Masks and Subnetting" webpage gives a simple example of how to use a 255.255.255.128 subnet mask to a create a restricted part in a class C network (e.g. 192.168.1.0) for a small enterprise.

Next I moved on to a more detailed explanation on wikipedia, subnetwork masks:

This logical addressing structure permits the selective routing of IP packets across multiple networks via special gateway computers, called routers, to a destination host if the network prefixes of origination and destination hosts differ, or sent directly to a target host on the local network if they are the same. Routers constitute logical or physical borders between the subnets, and manage traffic between them. Each subnet is served by a designated default router... The routing prefix of an address is written in a form identical to that of the address itself. This is called the network mask, or netmask, of the address. For example, a specification of the most-significant 18 bits of an IPv4 address, 11111111.11111111.11000000.00000000, is written as 255.255.192.0.

another important background concept for CIDR notation :

192.168.0.0, netmask 255.255.0.0 is written as 192.168.0.0/16

192.168.1.0, netmask 255.255.255.0 is written as 192.168.1.0/24

this concept is clearest by looking at the full binary format:

Binary form Dot-decimal notation

IP address 11000000.10101000.00000101.10000010 192.168.5.130

Subnet mask 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000 255.255.255.0

Network prefix 11000000.10101000.00000101.00000000 192.168.5.0

Host part 00000000.00000000.00000000.10000010 0.0.0.130

so going back to the first example, which has a restricted access server on the 2nd half of there private class C network with IP 192.168.1.131, netmask 255.255.255.128 is written as 192.168.1.3/25

Binary form Dot-decimal notation

IP address 11000000.10101000.00000001.10000011 192.168.1.3

Subnet mask 11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000 255.255.255.128

Network prefix 11000000.10101000.00000101.10000000 192.168.1.1

Host part 00000000.00000000.00000000.00000011 0.0.0.3

Perl and Oracle

2010-11-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

This page (http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Perl) shows all the basics of setting up a perl script connection to an Oracle database can making basic calls...

PHP Oracle FAQ - Oracle Wiki

2010-11-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

PHP Oracle FAQ - Oracle Wiki

A very good page showing how to work with PHP and Oracle.

I stumbled onto this page as I was just looking for a sample/simple stored procedure to borrow:

create procedure proc1(p1 IN number, p2 OUT number) as

begin

p2 := p1 + 10;

end;

|MG| Win7codecs 2.6.9 Download

2010-11-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

|MG| Win7codecs 2.6.9 Download

There is something mysterious about codecs ... this one comes highly recommended :)

ORACLE-BASE - Recompiling Invalid Schema Objects

2010-11-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

ORACLE-BASE - Recompiling Invalid Schema Objects

this is a good background summary page... the commands I like to keep at my fingertips are:

spool pre-compile-errors.lst

col owner form a15

col object_name a60

set line 100

select OWNER, object_name, object_type, status from dba_objects where status <> 'VALID';

spool utlrp.lst

@?/rdbms/admin/utlrp

spool post-compile-errors.lst

col owner form a15

col object_name form a30

set line 100

select OWNER, object_name, object_type, status from dba_objects where status <> 'VALID';

expdp/impdp, remap_schema and Oracle Wiki

2010-11-26T03:07:00.000-08:00

Data Pump Export (expdp) and Data Pump Import(impdp) - Oracle Wiki

The Oracle wiki is great - a clear and concise repository of examples of standard DBA commands... I have been using remap_schema with impdp today. This wasn't on the page but all the basics of expdp and impdp were.

Amsterdam foam - Ari Marcopoulo

2010-06-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Amsterdam is quite incredible, although it feels quite compact and friendly, you can easily walk across the city following beautiful canal paths and charming little streets.

However Amsterdam has a huge collection of museums, galleries, theatres and lots of charming buildings.

Foam is housed in a beautiful old canal mansion on Keizergracht, but unlike the "van Loon", on the opposite side of the canal, the inside of Foam is total modern with steel tubing and cobolt blue glass. The content of the gallery is very modern too, starting with Ari Marcopoulos who's work captures his interesting and colourful way of life, friends and family, plus the odd celebrity (e.g. Robert Mapplethorpe looking rather elegant):

Ari Marcopoulos (b. 1957) is an Amsterdam-born photographer and filmmaker, living and working in New York and California^[1]. As a photographer, film artist and adventurist, Marcopoulos, who began his career in New York City assisting Andy Warhol, transplants himself into the intimate lives of people living on the edge. Artists, snowboarders, musicians and skateboarders have been both muses and commercial subject-matter throughout his quarter century career as a photographer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Marcopoulos

Carl Rosa Opera: The Pirates of Penzance

2010-04-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

Saw a fantastic production of The Pirates of Penzance.

I like Musical and Gilbert and Sullivan is great fun - I know this has been out of fashion for some time but maybe it's on its way back!?

This production was fantastic, the costumes, the make-up, great comic timing, the orchestra and most of all the singing!

I think I first saw Gilbert and Sullivan aged 15, as an amateur production done at the local all girls private school (my mother taught physics their). I remember being really impressed - I think they teamed up with local boys private school. This was elite schooling at it best, teenagers doing something quite remarkable.

Today's production was cracking again - I was really impressed with the Carl Rosa Opera company! Mabel (lead soprano) trilled beautifully, a soaring wonderful voice. Samuel was sung by a well-rounded and deeply comfortable voice.

This is sung nearly perfectly by a very talented ensemble, complemented by some excellent individual performers, including two members of the original cast of Phantom of the Opera. Everyone sang well with brilliantly clear diction too, something so very necessary in getting across the full humour and cleverness of the lyrics. Rosie Ashe as pirate wench Ruth was superb, dexterously handling her exposition-heavy lyrics yet still hitting all the right comedic notes; Barry Clark’s Major General and Bruce Graham’s Police Sergeant were both nicely bumptious and Katy Batho impressed with a piercingly clear voice, hitting those top notes with a beautiful sound.
http://www.thepublicreviews.com/pirates-of-penzance-theatre-royal-brighton/

Music Hall - a most capacious form of performance

2010-04-04T15:43:00.000-07:00

The following usage of capacious had me reaching for my dictionary:

It [Music Hall] was a most capacious form of performance - people would come up and perform a turn... acting, comedy, song...

I like the idea of free space it conveys!

It also makes me think of one favourite books - Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters. This is a wonderful tale of closeted Victorian society. I love the lesbian and gay characters, it is shocking in parts and deeply romantic too.

capacious |kəˈpā sh əs|

adjective

having a lot of space inside; roomy : she rummaged in her capacious handbag.

DERIVATIVES

capaciously |kəˈpeɪʃəsli| adverb

capaciousness |kəˈpeɪʃəsnəs| noun

ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Latin capax, capac- ‘capable’ + -ious .

Another great tla film: Latter Days

2010-04-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

This is a truly amazing gay love story. 100% drama, 100% romantic and 100% gay and so so sweet.

Not only is this a wonderful tail of true love with a very well paced plot but it has a serious side.. it is easier to forget the insanity and sinister side of religion.

I'm not sure why gay and lesbians are attract to spiritual movements? However I will be staying clear of the Mormons:

Having grown up a Mormon and grappled with the church's bigotry towards Blacks (they were not allowed to hold the church's priesthood when I was a member) -- I wasn't aware of the organizations policy of excommunicating gay men and women until after I left the church in 1966 -- (I was 20.) I was stunned when I learned that friends who were gay were excommunicated even after serving on missions. LATTER DAYS exposes the Mormon's persecution of gay members. The film is LONG overdue. It does an excellent job of showing how the two lead males come to terms with one another, while managing to grow up and develop more fully as individuals. LATTER DAYS has great heart, wonderful original music and an added touch of class from Jacqueline Bisset. The film brilliantly tells the story of an individual who leaves behind the confines of organized religion and reclaims his very soul.

62 out of 75 people found the following review useful:
Heartwarming Story; Long Overdue, 22 November 2004

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0345551/usercomments

Demotic Street Language - The Telegraph on the Money?

2010-04-02T04:59:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across the following blog post, and while I rarely agree with The Telegraph's view on the world (rather to conservative/establishment-friendly for my taste), this "Telegraph blog post" makes a very interesting point/parallel:

Call me old-fashioned but should the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in the run-up to an election (or at any other time for that matter) say that people are “gagging for change”? As we all know only too well, Dave has had the advantage of one of the finest educations money can buy. Is it too much to expect that somewhere along the way he may have acquired a vocabulary that would allow him to make a trenchant political point without reaching into the demotic depths?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidhughes/100032397/demotic-dave-cameron-should-mind-his-language-and-remember-kinnock/

I like his usage of the term demotic - 100% correct but a very old fashioned formal term for Street Language.

I think politician should avoid try to be cool or expressing too much emotion, they will need to stay calm and focused under intense pressure, winning the general election is only the beginning not the finish line!

demoticadjectiveKnox picked up her demotic style of writing when she worked for a newspaper in Madison popular, vernacular, colloquial, idiomatic, vulgar, common;informal, everyday, slangy. antonym formal.

70-432 : Fixed server and database roles

2010-03-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

For the 70-432 exam you must understand the difference between the server and the database within the server.

You will need to under the fixed server-level and fixed database-level plus the associated stored procedures.

I found the following very useful summary:

Fixed server roles: These are server-wide roles. Logins can be added to these roles to gain the associated administrative permissions of the role. Fixed server roles cannot be altered and new server roles cannot be created. Here are the fixed server roles and their associated permissions in SQL Server 2000:

Fixed server role

Description

sysadmin

Can perform any activity in SQL Server

serveradmin

Can set server-wide configuration options, shut down the server

setupadmin

Can manage linked servers and startup procedures

securityadmin

Can manage logins and CREATE DATABASE permissions, also read error logs and change passwords

processadmin

Can manage processes running in SQL Server

dbcreator

Can create, alter, and drop databases

diskadmin

Can manage disk files

bulkadmin

Can execute BULK INSERT statements

Here is a list of stored procedures that are helpful in managing fixed server roles:

sp_addsrvrolemember

Adds a login as a member of a fixed server role

sp_dropsrvrolemember

Removes an SQL Server login, Windows user or group from a fixed server role

sp_helpsrvrole

Returns a list of the fixed server roles

sp_helpsrvrolemember

Returns information about the members of fixed server roles

sp_srvrolepermission

Returns the permissions applied to a fixed server role

Fixed database roles: Each database has a set of fixed database roles, to which database users can be added. These fixed database roles are unique within the database. While the permissions of fixed database roles cannot be altered, new database roles can be created. Here are the fixed database roles and their associated permissions in SQL Server 2000:

Fixed database role

Description

db_owner

Has all permissions in the database

db_accessadmin

Can add or remove user IDs

db_securityadmin

Can manage all permissions, object ownerships, roles and role memberships

db_ddladmin

Can issue ALL DDL, but cannot issue GRANT, REVOKE, or DENY statements

db_backupoperator

Can issue DBCC, CHECKPOINT, and BACKUP statements

db_datareader

Can select all data from any user table in the database

db_datawriter

Can modify any data in any user table in the database

db_denydatareader

Cannot select any data from any user table in the database

db_denydatawriter

Cannot modify any data in any user table in the database

Here is a list of stored procedures that are helpful in managing fixed database roles:

sp_addrole

Creates a new database role in the current database

sp_addrolemember

Adds a user to an existing database role in the current database

sp_dbfixedrolepermission

Displays permissions for each fixed database role

sp_droprole

Removes a database role from the current database

sp_helpdbfixedrole

Returns a list of fixed database roles

sp_helprole

Returns information about the roles in the current database

sp_helprolemember

Returns information about the members of a role in the current database

sp_droprolemember

Removes users from the specified role in the current database

http://vyaskn.tripod.com/sql_server_security_best_practices.htm

Another blog which also covers the above is http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1061781.html. This article had the advantage of several screenshots show how to administer security via SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) but I just don't like an example where you allocate db_accessadmin to guest - this is just to counter intuitive!

70-432 : Index usage (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats)

2010-03-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

This blog article is aimed at people preparing for 70-432 exam.

This DMV is particularly useful and represents one area where SQLServer appears to be ahead of te Oracle database engine (there is no easy to see which indexes have not been used in the last day / week / month ...)

Starting with the msdn documentation for dm_db_index_usage_stats:

sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats (Transact-SQL)

Returns counts of different types of index operations and the time each type of operation was last performed.

Column name

Data type

Description

database_id

smallint

ID of the database on which the table or view is defined.

object_id

int

ID of the table or view on which the index is defined

index_id

int

ID of the index.

user_seeks

bigint

Number of seeks by user queries.

user_scans

bigint

Number of scans by user queries.

user_lookups

bigint

Number of bookmark lookups by user queries.

user_updates

bigint

Number of updates by user queries.

last_user_seek

datetime

Time of last user seek

last_user_scan

datetime

Time of last user scan.

last_user_lookup

datetime

Time of last user lookup.

last_user_update

datetime

Time of last user update.

system_seeks

bigint

Number of seeks by system queries.

system_scans

bigint

Number of scans by system queries.

system_lookups

bigint

Number of lookups by system queries.

system_updates

bigint

Number of updates by system queries.

last_system_seek

datetime

Time of last system seek.

last_system_scan

datetime

Time of last system scan.

last_system_lookup

datetime

Time of last system lookup.

last_system_update

datetime

Time of last system update.

Remarks

Every individual seek, scan, lookup, or update on the specified index by one query execution is counted as a use of that index and increments the corresponding counter in this view. Information is reported both for operations caused by user-submitted queries, and for operations caused by internally generated queries, such as scans for gathering statistics.

The user_updates counter indicates the level of maintenance on the index caused by insert, update, or delete operations on the underlying table or view. You can use this view to determine which indexes are used only lightly by your applications. You can also use the view to determine which indexes are incurring maintenance overhead. You may want to consider dropping indexes that incur maintenance overhead, but are not used for queries, or are only infrequently used for queries.

The counters are initialized to empty whenever the SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service is started. In addition, whenever a database is detached or is shut down (for example, because AUTO_CLOSE is set to ON), all rows associated with the database are removed.

When an index is used, a row is added to sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats if a row does not already exist for the index. When the row is added, its counters are initially set to zero.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188755.aspx

Now the following is a good blog post with an example of how this works in practice and also when you should be checking index usage stats. Not only does the following provide a nice simple of example of usage of the DMV sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats but it also makes a good point about focusing your attention and efforts on defragmentating the key indexes with high usage stats (it is too easy to get side tracked by problems where you can see something is clearly wrong, but you aren't necessarily tackling the key performance problems) :

Whenever I’m discussing index maintenance, and specifically fragmentation, I always make a point of saying ‘Make sure the index is being used before doing anything about fragmentation’.

If an index isn’t being used very much, but has very low page density (lots of free space in the index pages), then it will be occupying a lot more disk space than it could do and it may be worth compacting (with a rebuild or a defrag) to get that disk space back. However, usually there’s not much point spending resources to remove any kind of fragmentation when an index isn’t being used. This is especially true of those people who rebuild all indexes every night or every week.

...

If you're interested in whether an index is being used, you can filter the output. Let's focus in on a particular table - AdventureWorks.Person.Address.

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

WHERE database_id = DB_ID('AdventureWorks')

and object_id = OBJECT_ID('AdventureWorks.Person.Address');

GO

You'll probably see nothing in the output, unless you've been playing around with that table. Let's force the clustered index on that table to be used, and look at the DMV output again.

SELECT * FROM AdventureWorks.Person.Address;

GO

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

WHERE database_id = DB_ID('AdventureWorks')

and object_id = OBJECT_ID('AdventureWorks.Person.Address');

GO

Now there's a single row, showing a scan on the clustered index. Let's do something else.

SELECT StateProvinceID FROM AdventureWorks.Person.Address

WHERE StateProvinceID > 4 AND StateProvinceId <>
GO

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

WHERE database_id = DB_ID('AdventureWorks')

and object_id = OBJECT_ID('AdventureWorks.Person.Address');

GO

And there's another row, showing a seek in one of the table's non-clustered indexes.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2007/04/20/how-can-you-tell-if-an-index-is-being-used.aspx

70-432 : Locks and Latchs (sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats)

2010-03-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

This blog article is aimed at people preparing for 70-432 exam.

The MCTS 70-432 exams introduces some of the dynamic management views (DMVs). I like the ideas of DMVs, as a seasoned Oracle DBA I know many of the key Oracle Instance and Database views well. Once of the advantages of having a SQL view (as opposed to a GUI tool) is that he DMV query can be scheduled to run periodically and log key columns over time (very important for a DBA).

Starting with the msdn documentation for dm_db_index_operational_stats we can that it can capture leaf DML operations plus lock and latch waits:

You can use sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats to track the length of time that users must wait to read or write to a table, index, or partition, and identify the tables or indexes that are encountering significant I/O activity or hot spots.

Use the following columns to identify areas of contention.

To analyze a common access pattern to the table or index partition, use these columns:

leaf_insert_count

leaf_delete_count

leaf_update_count

leaf_ghost_count

range_scan_count

singleton_lookup_count

To identify latching and locking contention, use these columns:

page_latch_wait_count and page_latch_wait_in_ms
These columns indicate whether there is latch contention on the index or heap, and the significance of the contention.

row_lock_count and page_lock_count
These columns indicate how many times the Database Engine tried to acquire row and page locks.

row_lock_wait_in_ms and page_lock_wait_in_ms
These columns indicate whether there is lock contention on the index or heap, and the significance of the contention.

To analyze statistics of physical I/Os on an index or heap partition

page_io_latch_wait_count and page_io_latch_wait_in_ms
These columns indicate whether physical I/Os were issued to bring the index or heap pages into memory and how many I/Os were issued.

Column Remarks

The values in lob_orphan_create_count and lob_orphan_insert_count should always be equal.

The value in the columns lob_fetch_in_pages and lob_fetch_in_bytes can be greater than zero for nonclustered indexes that contain one or more LOB columns as included columns. For more information, see Index with Included Columns. Similarly, the value in the columns row_overflow_fetch_in_pages and row_overflow_fetch_in_bytes can be greater than 0 for nonclustered indexes if the index contains columns that can be pushed off-row. For more information, see Row-Overflow Data Exceeding 8 KB.

How the Counters Are Reset

The data returned by sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats exists only as long as the metadata cache object that represents the heap or index is available. This data is neither persistent nor transactionally consistent. This means you cannot use these counters to determine whether an index has been used or not, or when the index was last used. For information about this, see sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats.

The values for each column are set to zero whenever the metadata for the heap or index is brought into the metadata cache and statistics are accumulated until the cache object is removed from the metadata cache. Therefore, an active heap or index will likely always have its metadata in the cache, and the cumulative counts may reflect activity since the instance of SQL Server was last started. The metadata for a less active heap or index will move in and out of the cache as it is used. As a result, it may or may not have values available. Dropping an index will cause the corresponding statistics to be removed from memory and no longer be reported by the function. Other DDL operations against the index may cause the value of the statistics to be reset to zero.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174281(SQL.90).aspx

Next what is the difference between a lock and a latch? A lock (aka "enqueue") is a request for exclusive or shared owner of some data - a row,page or extent (a set of eight contiguous pages makes up an extent). Now for Oracle a latch is lock on an internal data structure in the SGA:

What is the difference between locks, latches, enqueues and semaphores?

A latch is an internal Oracle mechanism used to protect data structures in the SGA from simultaneous access. Atomic hardware instructions like TEST-AND-SET are used to implement latches. Latches are more restrictive than locks in that they are always exclusive. Latches are never queued, but will spin or sleep until they obtain a resource, or time out.

Enqueues and locks are different names for the same thing. Both support queuing and concurrency. They are queued and serviced in a first-in-first-out (FIFO) order.

Semaphores are an operating system facility used to control waiting. Semaphores are controlled by the following Unix parameters: semmni, semmns and semmsl. Typical settings are:

semmns = sum of the "processes" parameter for each instance (see init.ora for each instance)

semmni = number of instances running simultaneously;

semmsl = semmns

http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Oracle_database_Internals_FAQ#What_is_the_difference_between_locks.2C_latches.2C_enqueues_and_semaphores.3F

while for SQLServer a latch is often described as a "lightweight lock" and again is about protect internal database engine structures like buffers:

Tips for Using SQL Server Performance Monitor Counters

By : Brad McGehee

Aug 24, 2005

A latch is in essence a "lightweight lock". From a technical perspective, a latch is a lightweight, short-term synchronization object (for those who like technical jargon). A latch acts like a lock, in that its purpose is to prevent data from changing unexpectedly. For example, when a row of data is being moved from the buffer to the SQL Server storage engine, a latch is used by SQL Server during this move (which is very quick indeed) to prevent the data in the row from being changed during this very short time period. This not only applies to rows of data, but to index information as well, as it is retrieved by SQL Server.

Just like a lock, a latch can prevent SQL Server from accessing rows in a database, which can hurt performance. Because of this, you want to minimize latch time.

SQL Server provides three different ways to measure latch activity. They include:

Average Latch Wait Time (ms): The wait time (in milliseconds) for latch requests that have to wait. Note here that this is a measurement for only those latches whose requests had to wait. In many cases, there is no wait. So keep in mind that this figure only applies for those latches that had to wait, not all latches.

Latch Waits/sec: This is the number of latch requests that could not be granted immediately. In other words, these are the amount of latches, in a one second period, that had to wait. So these are the latches measured by Average Latch Wait Time (ms).

Total Latch Wait Time (ms): This is the total latch wait time (in milliseconds) for latch requests in the last second. In essence, this is the two above numbers multiplied appropriately for the most recent second.

When reading these figures, be sure you have read the scale on Performance Monitor correctly. The scale can change from counter to counter, and this is can be confusing if you don't compare apples to apples.

Based on my experience, the Average Latch Wait Time (ms) counter will remain fairly constant over time, while you may see huge fluctuations in the other two counters, depending on what SQL Server is doing.

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/tips/sql_server_performance_monitor_coutners_p3.aspx

To finish the following query looks useful, a good example of how to use the sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats view:

Tables where the most latch contention is occurring

select object_schema_name(ddios.object_id) + '.' + object_name(ddios.object_id) as objectName,
indexes.name, case when is_unique = 1 then 'UNIQUE ' else '' end + indexes.type_desc as index_type,
page_latch_wait_count , page_io_latch_wait_count
from sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats(db_id(),null,null,null) as ddios
join sys.indexes
on indexes.object_id = ddios.object_id
and indexes.index_id = ddios.index_id
order by page_latch_wait_count + page_io_latch_wait_count desc

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2007/08/26/sys-dm-db-index-operational-stats.aspx

70-432 : Lock Events, SQL Server Profiler & Deadlock examples

2010-03-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

This blog article is aimed at people preparing for 70-432 exam and is an overview of lock event category with sample examples of how and when to use it

The 70-432 exams requires you are comfortable with the terminology around "lock events", a good place to start is simply referring to msdn documentation:

Locks Event Category

Use the event classes in the Locks event category to monitor locking activity in an instance of the Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine. These event classes can help you investigate locking problems caused by multiple users reading and modifying data concurrently.

Because the Database Engine often processes many locks, capturing the Locks event classes during a trace can incur significant overhead and result in large trace files or tables.

In This Section

Topic

Description

Deadlock Graph Event Class

Provides an XML description of a deadlock.

Lock:Acquired Event Class

Indicates that a lock has been acquired on a resource, such as a row in a table.

Lock:Cancel Event Class

Tracks requests for locks that were canceled before the lock was acquired (for example, to prevent a deadlock).

Lock:Deadlock Chain Event Class

Monitors when deadlock conditions occur and which objects are involved.

Lock:Deadlock Event Class

Tracks when a transaction has requested a lock on a resource already locked by another transaction, resulting in a deadlock.

Lock:Escalation Event Class

Indicates that a finer-grained lock has been converted to a coarser-grained lock.

Lock:Released Event Class

Tracks when a lock is released.

Lock:Timeout (timeout > 0) Event Class

Tracks when lock requests cannot be completed because another transaction has a blocking lock on the requested resource. This event occurs only in situations where the lock time-out value is greater than zero.

Lock:Timeout Event Class

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177493.aspx

Next I want to mention a very interesting presentation I went to last year, I did blog about this last year:

tech: Deadlocks due collisions in "SQL Server's hashing algorithm" (June 2009 SQL Server UserGroup)

At the SQLServer usergroup there was a brief overview of a very technical problem - there appears to be a bug in SQLServer's "hashing algorithm" which under certain circumstances is triggering "deadlocks" to occur.

James' detailed blog:

http://blogs.conchango.com/jamesrowlandjones/archive/2009/05/28/the-curious-case-of-the-dubious-deadlock-and-the-not-so-logical-lock.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

gives plenty of technical details behind this intriguing problem, and also the extensive collaborative investigation it took to unearth and document this bug.

I have gone through this great blog piece, highlighting what I see as the key concepts and steps. I have add some further references to key background concepts. This shows the process I went through to understand this issue, hopefully you find my comments a helpful introduction into understand this complex topics.

http://davetravelogue.blogspot.com/2009/06/tech-deadlocks-due-collisions-in-sql.html

This is a very interesting bug (complex and very rare) in SQL Server, the presentation at the London SQL Server UserGroup (www.sqlserverfaq.com) was very good and afterwards, I went though the details of the Conchango / EMC blog post go through the article. In my blog post ()

Don't want worry if you are struggling to follow this - this is very advanced/senior DBA material. However I would draw you're attention to the deadlock graph event, which can represented graphically or in XML format (see graphic at top of this page). This sort of information is similar to the data held within the Oracle dba_blockers view.

For a simpler / clean example of deadlocks Peter Wardy has written a good blog article which is easy to understand and recreate:

Creating a Deadlock

Below are the steps to generate a deadlock so that the behaviour of a deadlock can be illustrated:

-- 1) Create Objects for Deadlock Example
USE TEMPDB

CREATE TABLE dbo.foo (col1 INT)
INSERT dbo.foo SELECT 1

CREATE TABLE dbo.bar (col1 INT)
INSERT dbo.bar SELECT 1

-- 2) Run in first connection
BEGIN TRAN
UPDATE tempdb.dbo.foo SET col1 = 1

-- 3) Run in second connection
BEGIN TRAN
UPDATE tempdb.dbo.bar SET col1 = 1
UPDATE tempdb.dbo.foo SET col1 = 1

-- 4) Run in first connection
UPDATE tempdb.dbo.bar SET col1 = 1

Connection two will be chosen as the deadlock victim

ie.

Server: Msg 1205, Level 13, State 50, Line 1
Transaction (Process ID 56) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction.

Published Monday, December 12, 2005 11:00 AM by peter@wardyit.com

http://wardyit.com/blog//blog/archive/2005/12/12/65.aspx

Lastly I also found a very well written blog post by Brad McGehee

Brad is an Industry speaker, writer, and consultant on Microsoft SQL Server, specializing in SQL Server performance tuning, clustering, and high availability. He is the founder of www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com, and oversaw its growth to 350,000 visits each month. He is now Director of DBA Education at Red Gate Software. Brad is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, SQL Connections, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars, and he is the author or co-author of more than 12 technical books and over 100 published articles. He spends what time he has left with his family in Hawaii. He is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, MCSE+I, MCSD, MCT See also ..

The whole article is well worth reading but the following section is probably particularly relevant for the 70-432 exam:

To capture a SQL Server trace using SQL Server Profiler, you need to create a trace, which includes several basic steps:

1) You first need to select the events you want to collect. Events are an occurrence of some activity inside SQL Server that Profiler can track, such as a deadlock or the execution of a Transact-SQL statement.

2) Once you have selected the events you want to capture, the next step is to select which data columns you want to return. Each event has multiple data columns that can return data about the event. To minimize the impact of running Profiler against a production server, it is always a good idea to minimize the number of data columns returned.

3) Because most SQL Servers have many different users running many different applications hitting many different databases on the same SQL Server instance, filters can be added to a trace to reduce the amount of trace data returned. For example, if you are only interested in finding deadlocks in one particular database, you can set a filter so that only deadlock events from that database are returned.

4) If you like, you can choose to order the data columns you are returning, and you can even group or aggregate events to make it easier to analyze your trace results. While I do this for many of my traces, I usually don’t bother with this step when tracking down deadlock events.

5) Once you have created the trace using the above steps, you are ready to run it. If you are using the SQL Server Profiler GUI, trace results are displayed in the GUI as they are captured. In addition, you can save the events you collect for later analysis.

Now that you know the basics, let’s begin creating a trace that will enable us to collect and analyze deadlocks.

Selecting Events

While there is only one event required to diagnose most deadlock problems, I like to include additional context events in my trace so that I have a better understanding of what is happening with the code. Context events are events that help put other events into perspective. The events I suggest you collect include:

· Deadlock graph

· Lock: Deadlock

· Lock: Deadlock Chain

· RPC:Completed

· SP:StmtCompleted

· SQL:BatchCompleted

· SQL:BatchStarting

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/how-to-track-down-deadlocks-using-sql-server-2005-profiler/

Usability - a very clear graphic for a complex subject (BMI)

2010-03-03T14:57:00.001-08:00

I a big fan of usability and making messages clear and simple.

One of the problems with Body Mass Index is that the calculation is fiddly, not terribly intuitive and easy is to get wrong.

The attached graph is great - it is clear and simple that my weight is OK - a couple of years ago I was probably a bit over-weight but now I'm OK :)

usability (noun) ease of use, user-friendliness, accessibility, convenience, intuitiveness

win-win: the doctor says a low carbon lifestyle can be good for you!

2010-03-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

It is good to hear a high profile doctor (Consultant paediatrician and chair of the Advocacy Committee, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health) extolling the benefits of moving to a "low carbon lifestyle".

I think if we took more time for the simple pleasures, things would be better. As the doctor points out, switching to a more balanced diet (e.g. less meat) is one fairly easy step and this could make many people healthier and happier :)

Another thing I would advocate is trying to buy more local produce, if you buy in season local veg; they taste great, are cheap and have a much lower carbon footprint!

My favourite supermarket has started doing bags of local veg in the summer which was great! Even better, when I get time to visit my local greengrocer there are some absolute bargains.

As well as Dr Tony Waterson's interesting piece on the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8533937.stm

I also found the following blog article very interesting:

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2009/05/14/tony-waterston-on-climate-change-talks-at-the-commons/

Sir John Mortimer on Private Passions

2010-02-28T02:08:00.000-08:00

Listening to on old recording (1995) of Sir John Mortimer on Private Passions. I was a bit stunned that this incredibly successful barrister should emphasise that the key for a defence lawyer is to get the jury to laugh.

Sir John Mortimer, barrister, playwright and creator of 'Rumpole of the Bailey', died last year. He was one of the very early guests on 'Private Passions', and this edition, recorded at his Buckinghamshire home and first broadcast in 1995, offers another chance to hear him talking about one of his greatest passions, music.

The more I think about the law and politics, the more dubious they seem. There is so much scope for powerful people to abuse charm, good looks, fashion, humour to sway political debate and the legal system.

As I get older, I fear that I am becoming more cynical, we appear to becoming increasingly short-sighted and dummying down?

However on the flip side, I think great progress has been made (especially in 60s and 70s) on civil liberties and the UK schools, prisons and policing becoming more humane. LGBT rights have made huge progress and we are making good progress in the UK (e.g. in the workplace taunting-gay men is now increasingly unacceptable - it happened all the time only 10 years ago)

Furthermore we are making great technological progress and hopefully we can use this knowledge to live in a more efficient way? However the 21st is going to present huge challenges. I hope our leaders will have the intelligence and integrity and reject the current trend for winning arguments in the short-term by skewing statistics, mockery, smart suits... yes this has always been there but I fear we are dummying-down and loosing out humanity.

humane |(h)yoōˈmān|

adjective

1 having or showing compassion or benevolence : regulations ensuring the humane treatment of animals.

• inflicting the minimum of pain : humane methods of killing.

2 formal (of a branch of learning) intended to have a civilizing or refining effect on people : the center emphasizes economics as a humane discipline.

DERIVATIVES

humanely |(h)juˈmeɪnli| adverb

humaneness |(h)juˈmeɪn(n)1s| noun

ORIGIN late Middle English : the earlier form of human , restricted to the senses above in the 18th cent.

Behind Van Gogh - letters and sketchs

2010-02-11T23:36:00.001-08:00

The Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy is fantastic. The focus on his sketches and drawings, gave me a feeling for the private life of this brilliant talent. Even as a small boy when I was generally bored by my parents terminally long trips around various Europe's finest art galleries and museums, I loved the Van Gogh's and could loose myself in these paintings for long periods. I didn't realise who hard he worked as an artists - years of hard study and solid technical training, like Picasso he has done some beautiful line drawings. His style and unique technical skills clearly developed over many years.

Anyway the highlight of this exhibit was his sketches and his letters, which gives masses of colourful background into his life, what he read, what he thought, his passions...

It is also just nice to see the rough sketches behind some of his most famous painting.

Mon cher Theo,

Merci de ta lettre et du billet de 50 fr. qu’elle contenait. Merci de m’avoir encore écrit sur le tableau de ces artistes Hollandais.1

J’ai fait mettre le gaz dans l’atelier et dans la cuisine, ce qui me coûte 25 francs d’installation.2 Si Gauguin et moi travaillons une quinzaine tous les soirs ne les regagnerons nous pas? Seulement comme d’ailleurs G. peut maintenant venir de jour en jour j’aurai absolument absolument encore besoin de 50 francs au moins...

http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let709/letter.html

Juarez Machado : a bit outré!?

2009-12-27T02:14:00.000-08:00

I like the art of Juarez Machado, provactive, stylish and definitely sexy. The following text has an interesting use of english in french ("elle est trop hard" which roughly equates to the English expressing "a bit outré")

JUAREZ MACHADO ET LA FERIA DE BEZIERS

lundi 27 juillet 2009 Actu Alerter la modération

Les autorités muncipales de Béziers ont refusé la proposition du Galeriste Pierre Pastre qui leur proposait pour affiche de la Féria de Beziers cette superbe oeuvre du célèbre peintre brésilien Juarez Machado. Motif invoqué : elle est trop hard. Chacun appréciera.et au besoin rira, car l'affiche acceptée au lieu et place, due à l'imagination de Jean Nouvel a du être placardisée au lieu d'être affichée, le publiciste ayant utilisé sans son accord l'image du rugbyman Chaval qui a fort mal pris la chose. Résultat : Toutes les affiches ont du être détruites devant huissier? Qui de quatre palettes de tee shirts qui ont fini déchiquetés, broyés, compactés et de 50.000 programmes officiels qui ont du être pilonnés. Quant à la toile de Machado, elle a trouvé acheteur pour...un bon prix.

Ci dessous l'oeuvre de Juarez Machado
http://blog.francetv.fr/MOTAMOT/index.php/2009/07/27/133687-juarez-machado-et-la-feria-de-beziers

It is an amusing story too!

outré |oōˈtrā|

adjective

unusual and startling : in 1975 the suggestion was considered outré—today it is orthodox.

ORIGIN French, literally ‘exceeded,’ past participle of outrer (see outrage ).

I love Brighton

2009-12-27T00:56:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favourite photo's of 2009... Brunswick Square in the sunshine, the bright red colours, Myriam looking radiant and my boyfriend's new hair cut which make's me think of the 80s and the Thompson Twins:

In 1977, the original Thompson Twins line-up consisted of Tom Bailey (born 18 January 1954, Halifax, Yorkshire[3]) on bass and vocals, Pete Dodd on guitar and vocals, John Roog on guitar, and Jon Podgorski (known as "Pod") on drums.[4] Dodd and Roog first met when they were both 13 years old.

Arriving in London with very little money, they lived as squatters in Lillieshall Road, London. Future Thompson Twins member Alannah Currie lived in another squat in the same street — which is how she met Bailey. It was in this ramshackle and run-down house that they found an illegal way of "borrowing" electricity from the house next door. Bailey described themselves (laughingly) as "spongers" (meaning parasites) back then, as they were living on very little and scavenging everything they could lay their hands on. He even said that the only instruments they had were bought, or had been "stolen or borrowed". Dodd managed to get a council flat not far away. Their roadie at that time was John Hade, who lived in the same house, and who later became their manager...

At the end of 1983, a new single, "Hold Me Now", was released. The song was an international chart success, peaking at #3 in the US in the spring of 1984, becoming their biggest American hit,[7] and also hitting #4 in their native UK where it became the band's biggest seller earning a gold disc.[11] Further hit singles followed in 1984 with two UK Top 3 hits; "Doctor! Doctor!" and "You Take Me Up" (which reached #2, their highest UK chart placing,[2] and earned a silver disc).[12] Further singles included a new version of the album track "Sister of Mercy", and "The Gap" (though this was not released in the UK). The corresponding album, Into the Gap, was one of the biggest sellers of 1984, selling five million copies worldwide and topping the UK Albums Chart.[2] The band also embarked on a world tour in support of the album.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_Twins

radiant |ˈrādēənt|adjective1 sending out light; shining or glowing brightly : a bird with radiant green and red plumage. See note at bright .• (of a person or their expression) clearly emanating great joy, love, or health : she gave him a radiant smile.• (of an emotion or quality) emanating powerfully from someone or something; very intense or conspicuous : he praised her radiant self-confidence.2 [ attrib. ] (of heat) transmitted by radiation, rather than conduction or convection.• (of an appliance) designed to emit such energy, esp. for cooking or heating.

Royal Academy's Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska & Gill

2009-12-27T00:50:00.000-08:00

After a very nice coffee and chocolare brownie in the Royal Academies members room watching the snow fall, we proceeded to the exhbition of three of the great artists/sculptors of the 20th century.

Probably Epstein and his rock drill are better known than Eric Gill, both are better known than ....

Seeing Epstein's Rock Drill scultpture in it's full glory was dramatic. I have sense the torse version before in the Tate, which is very striking on it own; especially when you realises that this peace is now nearly 100 years old.

My image of Eric Gill was rather shattered by mother's revelations regarding his terrible, private life. This was totally at odds with the image I had of Gill. His drawing are beautiful, his calligraphy/very fine pen work are distinctive and his naturalistic/romantic full-breasted mother and child stone statues are absolutely adorable. However his private life, despite an appearance of being religious was depressingly awful, as mother pointed out - "you wished you didn't know about him".

The suprise highlights for me were the work's of Gaudier-Brzeska and the images of Ezra Pound:

The exhibition contains more than 90 works featuring mainly sculptures, drawings and pastels. With rooms dedicated to the work of each sculptor the exhibition focuses on the key achievements of each artist and reveals their impact on British sculpture. The show brings together spectacular works, including Epstein’s robotic masterpiece Rock Drill, Gaudier-Brzeska’s innovative carving of Birds Erect, and Gill’s controversial carving of the sexual act called Ecstasy.

The title of this exhibition is taken from the American poet Ezra Pound, who vividly remembered meeting Henri Gaudier-Brzeska for the first time in 1913. Pound was impressed by the young Frenchman, and likened him to “a well-made young wolf or some soft-moving, bright-eyed wild thing.” But those last two words also sum up the feisty and daring spirit of rebellion driving the young Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/wild-thing-epstein-gaudier-brzeska-gill/

It is tradgic to think that Gaudier-Brzeska talents were lost in the first World War.

White heat - Meng Yang Pan

2009-12-27T00:37:00.000-08:00

I recently spent a very pleasant short break in London with my mother.

The lunch time piano concert by the superbly talented Meng Yang Pan, she played with breath taking fluency and passion. It was incredible to see such a perfect and skilled performance.

The music: Scarlatti, Haydn, Poulence and Liszt was varied from the gentle and melodic to the crashing complex cords of Liszt. My mother commented that she didn't look heavy enough to have played this last piece. Her whole body and in particular were very expressive as she throw herself into this work body and soul.

I really was quite breath-taking to see such a powerful young talent perform at her very peak.

Watching her perform, I was reminded about a recent article about measuring brain activity in an MRI scanning. The article compared popular past times and activities like go to the gym, having a drink, ... not surprisingly top of this "pop chart" was sex.. However watching this incredibly intense performance I couldn't help feel that her level of engagement was off the scale and it made wonder if the "white heat" generated by a top perform must be hard to rival in their person relationships. I could help wondering if being "better than sex" might also be a bit of a burden?

The setting - St James Church Piccadilly is a beautiful old church with lovely stained glass windows and fine carvings and fittings. According to Mum, it was a "Wren Church".

Feel the pain (Empathie extrême?)

2009-12-26T03:59:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting story about MRI scans demonstrating that some of us really do "feel the pain"

Deux chercheurs britanniques, Jody Osborn et Stuart Derbyshire, de l'École de psychologie de l'Université de Birmingham, pensent maintenant l'avoir vérifié scientifiquement.
Ils ont exposé 108 participants à une série d'images de situations douloureuses, comme des athlètes blessés ou des patients recevant une injection. Ils ont utilisé la technique d'imagerie à résonance magnétique qui permet d'étudier le fonctionnement du cerveau en observant les régions cérébrales activées lors d'une tâche ou d'une émotion.
Environ le tiers des sujets ont dit avoir non seulement ressenti une émotion au moins sur une image, mais aussi avoir vite ressenti une douleur à l'endroit exact de la blessure.

Watching horror movies makes me quite sick... "Antichrist" (Lars von Trier) was truly terrible (except I liked the idea that the woman was the evil character and the man/husband was the victim).

empathie

nom féminin
(calque de l'allemand Einfühlung)

Faculté intuitive de se mettre à la place d'autrui, de percevoir ce qu'il ressent.

Oedipus and climate change

2009-12-12T00:58:00.000-08:00

The idea that the Oedipus myth also has a link between the quality of the land and the quality of the ruling class intrigued me:

Natasha Mitchell: Well many would be surprised possibly to hear that you've pulled out the Oedipus myth, for example, and applied it to climate change. I mean just a reminder, you know Oedipus unknowingly came to fulfil a prophesy that he would kill his father king and marry his mother Queen Jocasta and the result was that that happened and the city of Thebes became overrun with plagues and failed crops. Isn't that the story -- what's that got to do with climate change?
Jonathan Marshall: Well the myth does several different things: it talks about balance, it talks about the relationship between violence and knowledge. Oedipus does not want to know things, he does know certain things and he tries to avoid them from coming out. All the way through there are people trying to kill each other to avoid the consequences of their knowledge, like Laius tries to kill Oedipus when he's a child.
Natasha Mitchell: His father.
Jonathan Marshall: His father, yes, but also the land itself rebels against the rulers and I think this is quite an important myth which we don't talk about nowadays that in fact the quality of the land, the life of the land reflects the quality of the ruling class.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2009/2746165.htm#transcript

Checking this on wikipedia, I think I see the connection:

As Sophocles' Oedipus the King begins, the people of Thebes are begging the king for help, begging him to discover the cause of the plague. Oedipus stands before them and swears to find the root of their suffering and to end it. Just then, Creon returns to Thebes from a visit to the oracle. Apollo has made it known that Thebes is harboring a terrible abomination and that the plague will only be lifted when the true murderer of old King Laius is discovered and punished for his crime. Oedipus swears to do this, not realizing of course that he himself is the abomination that he has sworn to exorcise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus

In my life, I am very frustrated at the dangerously slow pace of government and big business regarding adapting to a low carbonworld

computing: Charactersets, Storage and Endianness

2009-11-29T15:29:00.000-08:00

I've been listern to an excellent Scott Hanselman podcast about Internationalisation, the focus of much of the podcast as about unicode charactersets and their storage formats.

Scott and Carl Franklin really got down into the detail and the subject of big vs little endianess came up. I guest the new Intel macs must be little endian, like PCs (the old PowerPC macs were big endian - which matched the http protocol - saving a bitwise switch / rotation of every word...)

Here is a little background of the key concepts

In computing, endianness is the ordering of individually addressable sub-units (words, bytes, or even bits) within a longer data word stored in external memory. The most typical cases are the ordering of bytes within a 16-, 32-, or 64-bit word, where endianess is often simply referred to as byte order. The usual contrast is between most versus least significant byte first, called big-endian and little-endian respectively.

Etymology

The term big-endian comes from Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels, where tensions are described in Lilliput and Blefuscu: whereas royal edict in Lilliput requires cracking open one's soft-boiled egg at the small end, inhabitants of the rival kingdom of Blefuscu crack theirs at the big end (giving them the moniker Big-endians). The terms little-endian and endianness have a similar intent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness

endian |ˈendēən|

adjective Computing

denoting or relating to a system of ordering data in a computer's memory whereby the most significant ( big endian) or least significant ( little endian) byte is put first.

ORIGIN 1980s: a reference to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, in which the Lilliputians were divided into two camps, those who ate their eggs by opening the ‘big’ end and those who ate them by opening the ‘little’ end.

Jesus Camp - the dangers of religion and indoctrination

2009-11-29T01:09:00.000-08:00

I've just watched Jesus Camp, a film/documentary about the upbringing of children by extreme christains in America, quite scary really: Harry Potter is the devil and must die... but George Bush is the best. They are very powerful and very scary. The trailer gives a feel for the film (although the film has a slower more measured paced)

Fischer is shown preaching a sermon where she mentions the Harry Potter character and claims that had he existed in biblical times, he "would have been put to death". Fischer admonishes the children—many whom are in tears—to "clean up your act" and not be hypocritical in their actions. As several tearful children gather around her, she pours water on their hands to be "washed in the water of [God's] word." ...
There is also a scene at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Levi and his family go on vacation to hear its now-disgraced pastor, Ted Haggard. Levi highly admires Haggard, and is thrilled to meet him. He informs Haggard that he too wants to be a pastor and has already preached sermons. Afterward, Levi, Rachael, Tory, their families and several other children take part in a Justice House of Prayer rally held by Engle in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Additionally, there is a debate between Fischer and Mike Papantonio, an attorney and a radio talk-show host for Air America Radio's Ring of Fire. Papantonio questions Fischer's motives for focusing her ministry efforts on children. Fischer explains that she does not believe that people have the freedom to choose their belief system once they pass childhood, and that it is important that they be immersed in evangelical Christian values from a young age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Camp

Here are a just few frightening quotes from the film:

Levi: At five I got saved...
Becky Fischer: Yeah?
Levi: ...because I just wanted more of life.
Rachel: [preaching to a group of guys sitting in a park] If you were to die right now in this moment, where do you think you'd go?
guy in the park: Heaven
Rachel: [subdued] Really?
guy in the park: Yeah. Sure.
Rachel: Oh... okay. Have a nice day!
[runs back to her friends]
Rachel: I think they were Muslims!
Home-schooled kids: I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag...
Levi's Mom: Did you get to the part yet where they say that science hasn't proven anything?
Becky Fischer: It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!
Becky Fischer: I can go into a playground of kids that don't know anything about Christianity, lead them to the Lord in a matter of, just no time at all, and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hearing the voice of God, because they're so open. They are so usable in Christianity.
Becky Fischer: [Referring to President George W. Bush] He has really brought some real credibility, um, to the Christian faith.
Ted Haggard: If the Evangelicals vote, they determine the election.
Levi's Mom: We believe that there's two kinds of people in this world: people who love Jesus and people who don't.
Rachel: There are certain churches, they're called "dead churches," and the people there, they sit there, like this
[blank stare monotone]
Rachel: - "We worship you God, we worship you God."... The churches that God likes to go to, are churches where they're jumping up and down, shouting his name, and just praising him, they're not acting - they're not quiet
[pious frown monotone]
Rachel: "We worship you... ," they're
[exuberant jumping]
Rachel: "Hallelujah God!" And depending on how they invite him, he'll be there, or not.
Ted Haggard: We've decided the Bible is the word of God. We don't have to have a General Assembly about what we believe. It's written in the Bible. Alright, so we don't have to debate what we think about homosexual activity. It's written in the Bible.
[pointing and looking into the camera]
Ted Haggard: I think I know what you did last night.
[audience laughs]
Ted Haggard: If you send me a thousand dollars, I won't tell your wife.
[audience and Haggard laughs]
Ted Haggard: If you use any of this, I'll sue you.
Becky Fischer: And while I'm on the subject, let me say something about Harry Potter. Warlocks are the enemies of God! And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they're an enemy of God and had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death!
Crowd: Amen!
Becky Fischer: You don't make heroes out of warlocks!
Becky Fischer: It's almost like being on the cover of "Rolling Stones"!
Levi: I think Galileo made the right choice by giving up science for Christ.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/quotes

Actually the parts which probably shocked me the most were Becky Fischers clear contempt for democracy and that indocrination of children is good!!

It all made think of that great Al Gore quote:

Al Gore [quoting Mark Twain] "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so."

I also liked this forum post from imdb:

Jesus Camp is serious business., 14 September 2006

Author: mmckelley from United States
This film intrigued me for several reasons: First it is filmed in my home state of Missouri, not the deep south as so many people think, in fact it is filmed near Kansas City.

The film is a well-presented view from the perspective of the ultra conservative, Evangelical movement. It is honest in its intent. Minister, Becky Fischer, is honest in her goals for the camp and its attendees.

I did find that the film seemed to play fast and loose with numbers. For example it is stated that 75% of all home schooled children are evangelical. I come from a liberal background and have many well-educated friends who home school and none of them are evangelical so I am skeptical about their claim.

As one might expect, statements are made such as "there is no such thing as global warming" and that "all homosexuals are going to hell." That doesn't surprise me. The fact that not one of the adults or children questions any of these statements or offers to provide proof or seek an alternative explanation is the elephant in the room.

However; the film is filled with passion and filmmakers present the information honestly. The sad issue is that the evangelical movement seems not to have learned anything from the War in Iraq. Our presence there will only result in civil war. This was predicted long before the war started, now, four years later, if the U.S. were to leave, full blown civil war would certainly result. Why, because the church and state in Iraq are inseparable.

I will eagerly await the sequel five years from now when the filmmakers return to Jesus Camp and reinterview these children. On second thought, perhaps they had ought to wait ten years.

I also feel sorry for more moderate christains:

"It shows the Midwest evangelicals are comparative to Muslim camps in the Middle East as if we're training up warriors to battle the world," said Andy Braner, director of the Christian camp Kanakuk Colorado. "It gives people a bad taste of what camps are all about."
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/novemberweb-only/146-12.0.html

But I also think Andy Braner is possibly missing the point about the dangerous cocktail of the church taking over the state (government/corporate&miltary power) in America?

I hope common sense and moderation wins-out in the worlds biggest super-power!

indoctrinate |inˈdäktrəˌnāt|

verb [ trans. ]

teach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically : broadcasting was a vehicle for indoctrinating the masses.

• archaic teach or instruct (someone) : he indoctrinated them in systematic theology.

ORIGIN early 17th cent.(formerly also as endoctrinate): from en- ¹, in- ²[into] + doctrine + -ate ³, or from obsolete indoctrine (verb), from French endoctriner, based on doctrine ‘doctrine.’

Jeremy Clarkson: "alpha male" or "alpha tw*t"

2009-11-25T14:53:00.000-08:00

I don't like Jeremy Clarkson and every time I hear his "toxic views" forced upon me in the name of humour, I think he is a sad and selfish macho man. Here are a few of things I find so upsetting about Mr Clarkson...

Clarkson scaled Ben Tongue in Sutherland in a new Land Rover Discovery for the BBC2 show, reportedly churning up fragile peat bogs and heather as he went.

The damage done will be lasting, according to the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, which says the stunt was irresponsible and likely to encourage similar destructive behaviour on other private estates.

"The virgin land Clarkson has chewed up will now take hundreds of years to be regenerated," said the council's president, John Mackenzie, the Earl of Cromartie.

"There's no excuse for this, no matter how good the Land Rover might have been. This sets a precedent and it is going to encourage even less disciplined individuals to act irresponsibly."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/nov/16/environment.broadcasting

His response to this criticism was totally un-apologetic - no surprise.

I think he is very toxic:

Clarkson has long been noted for his pro-smoking viewpoint, with him even publicly smoking as much as possible on National No Smoking Day.
On the environment, Clarkson is not sympathetic to the green agenda. He once said: "I do have a disregard for the environment. I think the world can look after itself and we should enjoy it as best as we can".
He has little respect for groups such as Greenpeace, and believes that the "eco-mentalists" are a by-product of the "old trade unionists and CND lesbians" that hadn't gone away but merely found a new cause.
Clarkson is not however a climate change denier, commenting on the effects of global warming - "let's just stop and think for a moment what the consequences might be. Switzerland loses its skiing resorts? The beach in Miami is washed away? North Carolina gets knocked over by a hurricane? Anything bothering you yet?"

Unfortunately I also think he is very influencial:

Clarkson has been described as a "skilful propagandist for the motoring lobby" by The Economist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Clarkson

IQ and Politics: Childhood intelligence predicts voter turnout, voting preferences, and political involvement in adulthood: The 1970 British Cohort St

2009-11-24T01:33:00.000-08:00

This fascinating story, obviously as an active member of the green party (who has previously voted lib dem) it is rather flattering.

Based on matching IQ data to voting patterns, at top at around 108 are the Greens and Lib Dems. Next at around 103/4 are the conservatives and labour and lastly at the both of the heap are UKIP and the BNP 98.

Monday 3 November 2008
Childhood intelligence is linked to voting preferences and political involvement in adulthood according to a recent study.
People with a higher intelligence in childhood were more likely to vote as adults, and were more likely to vote for the Green Party and Liberal Democrats in a general election, researchers have found.
The study, funded by the UK Medical Research Council, suggests that childhood general intelligence is associated with a person’s political allegiance as much as social class – which has been studied previously as a marker of British voting habits...
http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Newspublications/News/MRC005139

and from a The Guardian commentator:

If the results of general elections are anything to go by, voting Green or Liberal Democrat must be a thankless task. But now the supporters of these parties can console themselves with the knowledge that, although they may not elect a prime minister, there's a good chance that they are cleverer than the people who do.
Academic research published in the journal Intelligence compares the way people voted in the 2001 election with their IQ at the age of 10 (using data from the 1970 British cohort study). The results are fascinating.
On a party-by-party basis, the average (childhood) IQ scores for 2001 voters were:
Green - 108.3
Liberal Democrat - 108.2
Conservative - 103.7
Labour – 103
Plaid Cymru - 102.5
Scottish National - 102.2
UK Independence - 101.1
British National - 98.4
Did not vote/None of the above - 99.7
The research was based on a survey involving 6,000 people, so it's obviously pretty authoritative...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/nov/03/greenpolitics-liberaldemocrats

The scientist behind this study seem to come from very reputable institutions:

Childhood intelligence predicts voter turnout, voting preferences, and political involvement in adulthood: The 1970 British Cohort St
Ian J. Deary^a^,, G. David Batty^a^,^b and Catharine R. Gale^c

^aMedical Research Council Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, UK

^bMedical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK

^cMedical Research Council Epidemiology Resource Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton SO16 6YD, UK

Ian J. Deary BSc, MB, ChB, PhD (Edin), FRCPsych, FRCPE, FBA, FRSE, FMedSci Professor

G David Batty , lecturer in epidemiology. Epidemiology Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT

Dr Catherine Gale PhD

Principal Research Fellow

After studying Classics at the University of Cambridge, Catharine Gale worked in archaeological research. She then studied Population Sciences at the University of Southampton and joined the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit in 1994. She obtained a PhD in 1998 for a thesis on the role of antioxidant vitamins in determining risk of cerebrovascular disease and cognitive decline in elderly people.

Orpheus in the Underworld

2009-11-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

I love opera / classical singing but am a bit intimidated by the £70+ticket prices and the posh-atmosphere of the opera world.

The background to this operatta is quite interesting in itself

The work, first performed in 1858, is said to be the first classical full-length operetta.^[1]^[2] Offenbach's earlier operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France did not allow certain genres of full-length works. Orpheus was not only longer, but more musically adventurous than Offenbach's earlier pieces ..

The operetta is an irreverent parody and scathing satire on Gluck and his Orfeo ed Euridice and culminated in the risqué galop infernal (often copied, widely used as the background music for the Can-can dance, and erroneously called "Can-can") that shocked some in the audience at the premiere. Other targets of satire, as would become typical in Offenbach's burlesques, are the stilted performances of classical drama at the Comédie Française and the scandals in society and politics of the Second French Empire ...

The piece was not immediately a hit, but critics' condemnation of the travesty, particularly that ofJules Janin, who called it a "profanation of holy and glorious antiquity," only provided vital publicity, serving to heighten the public's curiosity to see the piece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_in_the_Underworld

Nadjib who knows greek mytholodgy very well, while really liking the character of "public opinion" did feel that something of the original love story of Orpheus was lost:

The Greeks of the Classical age venerated the legendary figure of Orpheus as chief among poets and musicians, and the perfector of the lyre invented by Hermes. Poets like Simonides of Ceos said that, with his music and singing, he could charm birds, fish and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance,^[4] and even divert the course of rivers. He was one of the handful of Greek heroes^[5] to visit the Underworld and return; even in Hades his song and lyre did not lose their power.

The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that of his wife Eurydice (also known as Agriope). While fleeing fromAristaeus (son of Apollo), Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel. Distraught, Orpheus played such sad songs and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus traveled to theunderworld and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (he was the only person ever to do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. He set off with Eurydice following and in his anxiety as soon as he reached the upper world he turned to look at her, forgetting that both needed to be in the upper world, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

I understand Nadjib's point, the following synopsis shows that this Wondering Ministrals production (while holding true to Offenbach's work) is quite distinct from the original Greek myth:

A slightly different version of this classic romp with the ancient gods..
Orpheus and Eurydice have been married for years-and they just can’t stand each other! They have both been “playing the field” and Eurydice is now having an affair with a shepherd. What she doesn’t know is that her shepherd is non other than that little devil Pluto, God of the Underworld, and does he have plans for her !
When Pluto abducts Eurydice and whisks her off to Hades, Orpheus is ecstatic - but he bows to pressure from Public Opinion to go and plead with Jupiter, Father of the Gods, for her release. Those naughty little Gods just can’t help interfering in the daily lives of us mere mortals.
Anyway all is not well up on Mount Olympus - the Gods are bored and fed up with a diet of nectar and ambrosia. When they get the opportunity to descend to Hell for the party of a lifetime they’re off like a shot.
The world-famous operetta was written in 1858 with music by Jacques Offenbach. Intended as a satire of the gods of Greek and Roman antiquity, it caused outrage when first presented as French audiences were shocked to see figures from Classical Antiquity lampooned this way! 2009 audiences, however, would be hard-pressed to be shocked about such a thing.
The WMs are delighted to present "Orpheus in the Underworld" and are sure that you will enjoy listening to Offenbach’s well known music performed by an enthusiastic and talented cast.
http://www.thewms.biz/

The Wondering Minstrals were amazing - a real Brighton/Sussex jewel!

I am looking forward to their concerts next year :)

The cast were quite fantastic - here are a few of my highlights:

JUPITER, father of the gods (Mike Mackenzie) great acting and singing. He carried the father of mount Olympus role off really well and was like a modern politician when it came to covering up his own indiscretion.

JUNO, his wife (Karen Hollamby) – the long suffering wife of Jupiter and with that many children you understand why

DIANA, goddess of hunting (Sally Wilson) - fantastic voice and 60s mod-style outfit

MERCURY, messenger of the gods (Toby Willis) – great poise – his movement and costume were great – I kept think of the Correggio painting in the National Gallery (Venus with Mercury and Cupid - 'The School of Love') but that could have been the wings ;-)

VENUS, goddess of love (Vicky Rodgers) – I loved her Marilyn Monroe outfit – she really did look like the modern "goddess of love"

CUPID, Venus's son - Ciru James – a powerful voice with an impish gleam in the eye

ARISTEUS, a shepherd / PLUTO, ruler of the underworld - Jonathan Nulty - like Jupiter, this role required poise confidence and bravado + a damn fine singing voice

JOHN STYX, Pluto's factotum - Bob Hinton - not a very charismatic role to play but played well

ORPHEUS, a music teacher - Tony Adams - great voice, a good amount of style

EURYDICE, his wife - Sue Fleet - she sung quite beautifully and played her role superbly – possibly the star of the show

PUBLIC OPINION - Sam Brennan – a classic English matron role, crisp, precise and slightly strict – beautifully sung.

The Brighton Pavilion election: Green vs Tories

2009-11-22T06:44:00.000-08:00

The Tory party, have chosen a candidate who will be well received in Brighton. Charlotte is an attractive and stylish business lady, specialising in therapy over the internet:

• Explain your business to my Mum.

"An anonymous place where you can express what's on your mind, gain support and talk to others, to make your life happier."

• How do you make money?

"Providing co-branded support networks to organisations that wish to offer safe, anonymous and 24/7 facilitated support to their customers or employees; targets include corporate social responsibility programmes of corporates, charities, professional organisations etc - any organisations that offers support."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/jul/30/elevatorpitchbigwhitewallgi

There is no question that Charlotte represents the "nice-face" of the modern conservative party.

However the reality is that if elect she will be marginalised / ignored / "whipped into line", by a not-so-nice Tory party leadership. Even in Brighton she struggled to get elected as candidate despite her obvious appeal to the local electorate.

The current Tory party is more typically represented by the elitism, secret clubs and the worse excesses of extreme privilege... I'm sure Boris Johnson, George Osbourne and David Cameron were all exceptionally able academically and did very well in the cosy world of top public schools (Eton, Marlborough, ..), then excelling at Oxford in a world of privilege they perceived as their hard earned right.

I went to Oxford (89-92) and was an exact contemporary of David Hannah, who was then president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. David Hannah is now an MEP and has appeared regularly on Fox news, attacking both Obama'a health care reforms and the NHS:

Conservative US Republicans opposed to the President's healthcare plans have used the NHS as an example of “socialised” medicine...

Mr Hannan is a popular figure among grassroots Tories because of his strong right-wing views. His Telegraph.co.uk blog and his public harangue of Gordon Brown in the European Parliament earlier this year also made him a political celebrity in the US.

However, his agenda is at odds with the modernising message of Mr Cameron, who has repeatedly promised that the NHS would be the top priority of a Conservative Government.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/6025818/David-Cameron-backs-NHS-amid-United-States-healthcare-row.html

There is a clear demand in the Tory party for more private health care. In my mind, this can only lead to great inequality and injustice as is so clearly seen in our education system which does almost as much to divide a nation as it does to educate it.

So the nation is about to elect a new Tory government, dominated by Oxford educated, public-school boys who have a narrow view of the world.

I do find it deeply troubling that so many senior Tories (e.g. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and George Osborne) were members of the Bullingdon club:

Prospective new members are proposed by a current member and then subjected to a club vote. This is all done in secret. You can be "put up" and blackballed and never be any the wiser. The first a new bug knows about it is when his rooms are invaded (ideally, via the window) and ceremonially trashed by way of initiation ("they overturned some of my flower pots," recalls my source). The financial costs run to the outfit, which at close to £2,000 is safely beyond most student overdrafts. There have been rumours of wealthier members paying an annual stipend of up to £10,000....

Breakages, scraps and bust-ups seem to be a hazard of membership. Standard Bullingdon practice is for club members to pay off in cash any injured party (usually a bemused restaurateur with a private room full of broken china). It's this high-handed brand of yobbishness that has drawn most public opprobrium. It's not so much the damage that causes offence. It's the attitude, the innate sense that position and - more specifically - wealth will always be able to make good any inconvenience suffered by "civilians".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/may/09/oxbridgeandelitism.highereducation

By electing Caroline Lucas in Brighton we can have a local MP who will defend the rights of the poor, has campaigned for many years on the importance of the environment and sustainability. Caroline has many years experience of being an MEP and has used the European Parliament a forum to discuss important issues, win legal reforms and defend the rights of the poor.

The harsh reality is that the attractive face of Charlotte Verre doesn't reflect the true injustice, intolerance and arrogance of a Tory party, born out of the British empire and that still perceives Great Britain as a quasi-imperial power.

The greens will be fighting for a fairer world and some common sense, where we try and address our tough environmental and economic problems. We haven't forgotten the £1,500,000,000 the UK government has had to spend bailing out the banking sector, who within 12 months of holding us to ransom with threats of economic meltdown were paying themselves multi-million pound bonuses!! The new leaders of Tory party (Osborne and Cameron) instead of addressing the institutional problems in the city, are proposing a harsh new policies attacking the pay and pensions of low paid public sector workers. Apparently even senior Tories and FT editorials have said this is the wrong policy because of (a) the injustice and (b) it is unnecessary / unhelpful and could prolong the recession and lead to widespread strikes?

jQuery presentation and XMLHttpRequest.status problem

2009-11-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to a VBUG event (at Anteo, Smithfield, London), it was really good presentation giving a whistle stop tour of jQuery.

You see the George Adamson's slide show at:

http://www.slideshare.net/george.adamson/get-going-with-jquery-by-george-adamson-at-ddd-south-west

I am big fan of jQuery, principally as it:

1) It simplifies working with JavaSript, DOM, CSS, HTML

2) Is completely cross-browser (I haven't seen or heard of many browser specific problems so far)

3) It has Microsoft endorsement. I suspect script.aculo.us is absolute fabulous product, but as I am not a front-end UI specialist, I just want to learn how to work with one good product and ideally the one which is going to be adopted as the industry standard.

4) As well as being powerful, it is also very elegant and beautiful - I love the clear succinct nature of ASP.NET MVC with jQuery, compare this to the monster ViewState of AJAX in ASP.NET 2.o WebForms.

It was a great presentation and afterwards Nadjib and myself have been working on a niggly jQuery problem: "uncaught exception ... NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE"

The problem we eventualyl tracks down to trying to read the XMLHttpRequest.status after a jQuery.Ajax().timeout had occurred.

Adjusting our error logging code, so logging of timeout events doesn't refer to the XMLHttpRequest.status has stopped this bug!

equality: Action Against Hate Crime, Trafalgar Square, London

2009-11-01T13:59:00.000-08:00

At the event I meet up with two friends from choir Steve (with me in the photo) and Angela (who took the photo) at the event.

It was obviously a very sad occasion on one level, however the atmosphere was good (it always helps if the weather holds out) and I was impressed that with absolutely minimal joint rehersal, they managed to fits us into their four-part harmony version "Seasons of love" - mostly it was quite a simple arrangement except for a few twirly bits (I was singing tenor-2 with Steve).

The event itself was very well run, some good speakers and Sandig Toksvig was a class compere.

The testimony of the pastor from St Martin's in the Field (an out lesbian priest), was truely horrific - the 10th anniversary of the Admiral Duncal nail bombing attack.

There were quite a few politican (Steve knew a few of the greens personally) and also a stand-up comic (the event needed some light relief).

Finishing on You'll Never Walk Alone worked well (although Steve was disappointed that they dropped Hand in Hand).

Lastly the testimony from Ian's friends brought a tear to the eye - he sounded like a good regular guy (apparently his sister was on the stage too but understandable couldn't bring her speak).

humour: The Elfish Gene

2009-10-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed this memoir, Mark Barrowcliffe is a great story teller and comedian.

This was a great trip back into the wrold of RPGs. It's loaded with subtle humor and details the life that many wargamers knew growing up.

I recommend this book to anyone who has had an interest in RPGs or anyone who has known a gamer
(www.amazon.com Customer Review)

Not only is very funny (I was in tears at a couple of points), but he also paints a interesting picture of a rather grey childhood grow up in a comprehensive school in the 1970s Coventry. However his parents sounded great.

I choose this memoir as:

I need more laughs
My boyfriend is a big fan of RPG (Role Playing Games)
Mark now lives in Brighton

memoirnoun1 a touching memoir of her childhood account, history, record,chronicle, narrative, story, portrayal, depiction, sketch, portrait,profile, biography, monograph.2 (memoirs) : he published his memoirs in 1955 autobiography, life story, memories, recollections, reminiscences; journal, diary.

librarians and stress

2009-10-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

This story has always stuck in my mind, my image of being a librarian was not a high-stress job, libraries are normally very calm and peaceful places and just how much stress and responsibility could looking after books be.

However these were opinions were not based an really detailed analysis, just my gut feelings. More careful research has found that possibly counter-intuitively that being a librarian is a very high-stress job:

Delegates at a conference of the British Psychological Society in Glasgow today will hear the results of a research project which suggests that being a librarian induces more stress than working for the emergency services, driving a 125mph express, or teaching a class of ill-behaved children.

One obvious problem is a degree of repetition and going stir-crazy:

Librarians, he found, were more significantly unhappy with their workplace than anyone else. “It seems they are sick of being stuck between the same shelves of books all day. They also found their work repetitive and unchallenging, and overall had very little job satisfaction.

One interesting idea I heard at the time was that librarian are regularly harangued by aggresive and impatient people, a key part of the problem is that they are often juggling a long list of unfinished tasks?

harangue |həˈra ng |nouna lengthy and aggressive speech.verb [ trans. ]lecture (someone) at length in an aggressive and critical manner : the kind of guy who harangued total strangers about PCB levels in whitefish.

Stonewall - a tribute

2009-10-03T04:06:00.000-07:00

This was a fascinating program, talking about the gay rights campaigning group Stonewall. The more I learn about Stonewall the more impressed I become.

Listening to me made quite angry at times, in particular when right wing started banging on about as homosexual as a bunch of sodomites try to pervert young boys... or how they hoped and expected us to be wiped out by AIDS. These moments in the program made me very angry and sad.

Sue brings together the men and women who founded the gay rights campaign group, Stonewall. She is joined by Sir Ian McKellen, Matthew Parris, Lisa Power, Michael Cashman and Olivette Cole-Wilson.

In 1989 a small group joined forces in a campaign against a law now known as Section 28. This law banned councils from 'promoting homosexuality' or 'promoting the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship'.

The gay rights scene at the time was radical and activist and there were no campaign groups engaging both gay men and lesbians together. Stonewall aimed to create a professional lobbying group that would fight against the discrimination of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. Dubbed Stonewall to signal doggedness and to commemorate the New York riots in which gay protestors had fought back against police brutality two decades before, it called for full legal rights, which still seemed a loony-left pipe dream.

Stonewall's moderate tone attracted criticism from more radical veterans of the gay rights movement, but also lent its advocates greater media respectability and a hearing from government ministers.

Since its inception, Stonewall has led the way with an impressive number of reforms, pressing ministers and taking test cases to court. These reforms include the repeal of Section 28, equalising the age of consent, permitting civil partnerships and overturning the ban on gays in the military. Another legacy has been to allow gay and lesbian politicians into the mainstream - not just demanding equal rights, but as representatives of the wider community.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mpmm4

To me Stonewall represents the intelligence and tolerant side of the English culture. Whilst I understand the frustration of the more militant elements of gay-right campaigners, Stonewall is highly effective and is building bridges so that the LGBT community is not perceived as "sick minority" (pitied but tolerated/decriminalised), no we are a colourful-jewel of modern society :)

My favourite moment was when the Stonewall paid homage to Peter Thatchel as an A* ground-breaking political activist. There was a good comparison with the more radical elements of the "suffragette movement". We need campaigner's like Peter, in the last couple of years I have been particularly impressed with (1) his campaign against "murder music" (a British Consular in Jamaica was killed last month... the police found the words "batty boy" scribbled beside his bed) and (2) within the UK legal system (a) religious beliefs are in some way mitigation against

and discrimination on grounds of sexuality and (b) apposed new legalisation in the UK where discrimination on grounds of sexuality is not treated in the same way as other types of discrimination... these are hard problems and if we don't fight our corner we will slip back...

suffragette |ˌsəfrəˈjet|

noun historical

a woman seeking the right to vote through organized protest.

Great Lives: Boris Johnson on Samuel Johnson

2009-09-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

This was an interesting program, my father has always admired Samuel Johnson while I have found the way he is portrayed in the press, is often a bit smug, jingoistic and offensive:

Matthew Parris presents the biographical series in which his guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, nominates Samuel Johnson, writer of the great dictionary. Dr Johnson's biographer, Peter Martin, joins the discussion.

As for Boris Johnson, I personally find him arrogant, boorish, out-of-touch and a perfect example of why the country shouldn't be dominated by a clique lead from the old upper-class institutions of eton-charthouse-winchester-harrow-oxbridge... This is quite a complex problem as these institution certainly are the elite of educators, have incredible strong histories, attract many of the very best teachers and students. Despite a brief period in the 60s & 70s when a more open society and new state institutions became fashionable, these old class-riddled institutions have few rivals.

Anyway I was intrigued by this program, mediated by the Mathew Paris, one of the very few conservative MPs, I like and respect (I'm please to say that I admired Mathew Paris' before I learnt that he was also gay man).

I elarnt quite a lot about Samuel Johnson and I was left with a slightly more favourable impression of him. Although I am still mystified why anyway would say anything so misogynistic and plain offensive as his awful quip regarding women preachers:

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

Despite my more positive outlook regarding Samuel Johnson, my contempt and dislike of Boris Johnson increased another notch.. I don't understand why he would praise The Sun and The Mail for the bold rudeness, political incorrectness.. I can see the point he is trying to make, but to me it is so weak but maybe to a more conservative mind these are qualities?

Matthew Paris, as a openly gay brought up with great finesse, a quote from one of Boris Johnson's "political incorrect" speeches:

if gay marriage was OK - and I was uncertain on the issue - then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.

It was a quote Boris foresaw that Matthew was going to raise and he tried to "talk over" Matthew, almost shouting him down to take control of the conversation and to try to drive the conversation away from this intensely nasty, bullying quip. However it was with great finesse, after Boris had blustered the conversation towards his own safe terriority, that Matthew

If you want to see more of the same, I have more on a blog post from May 2007:

http://davetravelogue.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-london-mayor-boris-vs-ken.html

Lastly both men, while have rare talents and are hard-working (workaholics?) the have common flaws.. their arrogance and conceit, alienate as many people as they inspire?

jingo |ˈji ng gō|

noun ( pl. -goes) dated chiefly derogatory

a vociferous supporter of policy favoring war, esp. in the name of patriotism.

PHRASES

by jingo! an exclamation of surprise.

ORIGIN late 17th cent. (originally a conjuror's word): by jingo (and the noun sense) come from a popular song adopted by those supporting the sending of a British fleet into Turkish waters to resist Russia in 1878. The chorus ran: “We don't want to fight, yet by Jingo! if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too.”

nepotism |ˈnepəˌtizəm|

noun

the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, esp. by giving them jobs.

DERIVATIVES

nepotist |ˈnɛpətəst| noun

ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from French népotisme, from Italian nepotismo, from nipote ‘nephew’ (with reference to privileges bestowed on the “nephews” of popes, who were in many cases their illegitimate sons).

misogynist |məˈsäjənist|

noun: a man who hates women.

adjective: reflecting or inspired by a hatred of women : a misogynist attitude.

DERIVATIVES

finesse

noun

1 masterly finesse skill, skillfulness, expertise, subtlety, flair, panache, élan, polish, artistry, virtuosity, mastery.

2 a modicum of finesse tact, tactfulness, discretion, diplomacy, delicacy, sensitivity, perceptiveness, savoir faire.

3 a clever finesse winning move, trick, stratagem, ruse, maneuver, artifice, machination.

70-433 SQL Server - Common Table Expressions

2009-09-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

Firstly looking on wikipedia:

CTE can be thought of as an alternatives to derived tables (subquery), views, and inline user-defined functions

CTEs are define by the WITH statement and enable you to seperately define a complex sub-select statement separately making your queries more readable/logical.

Some of the most frequent uses of a Common Table Expression include creating tables on the fly inside a nested select, and doing recursive queries. Common Table Expressions can be used for both selects and DML statements. The natural question is, if we have been using TSQL for this long without Common Table Expressions, why start using them now? There are several benefits to learning CTEs. Although new to SQL Server, Common Table Expressions are part of ANSI SQL 99, or SQL3. Therefore, if ANSI is important to you, this is a step closer. Best of all, Common Table Expressions provide a powerful way of doing recursive and nested queries in a syntax that is usually easier to code and review than other methods.

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3502676/Common-Table-Expressions-CTE-on-SQL-2005.htm

The following simple example demonstrates the syntax:

USE AdventureWorks GO

WITH MyCTE( ListPrice, SellPrice) AS (

SELECT ListPrice, ListPrice * .95

FROM Production.Product )

SELECT * FROM MyCTE  GO

The above myCTE can then be in place of a table in the immediate next SQL statement.

Above the MAXRECURSION statement limits the number of times the sub-query will run

70-433 SQL Server Powershell

2009-09-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

It would be nice to see some good examples of SQL Server power shell, Martin Bell's blog went through some of Microsoft Book On Line (BOL) examples; but I didn't immediately see where and why powershell scripting would help (the idea sounds great as I am big fan of Unix shell scripting).

I suspect somewhat like JavaScript which was not used in a particularly flexible or subtle way at first, that powershell has enormous potential and it just needs people to understand and use it to it's full capacity (in a possibly similar way to jquery libraries "on top of basic JavaScript")?

The 70-433 requires basic familiarity:

"Get-Item . | Get-ChildItem" cmdlet

returns "index names for table employees" when applied to the "indexes location"

(i.e. path SQLSERVER:SQL\Srv1\DEFAULT\Databases\Tables\Employees\Indexes)

returns "column names for table employees" when applied to the "columns location"

(i.e. path SQLSERVER:SQL\Srv1\DEFAULT\Databases\Tables\Employees\Columns)

"Get-Item . | Get-Member -type Properties " cmdlet

returns "all properties for table employees" when applied to the "tables location"

(i.e. path SQLSERVER:SQL\Srv1\DEFAULT\Databases\Tables\Employees)

70-433 SQL Server - SERVICEs & QUEUEs

2009-09-24T20:58:00.000-07:00

CREATE SERVICE service_name [AUTHORIZATION owner_name] ON QUEUE [schema_name.]queue_name

[(contract_name | [DEFAULT]) [,...n];

A SERVICE (aka "Service Broker") require a QUEUE to be created, for example

CREATE QUEUE myQueue WITH STATUS=ON, ACTIVATION (

STATUS=OFF, PROCEDURE_NAME=myProcForMessageHandling,

MAX_QUEUE_READERS=3, EXECUTE AS SELF);

The above queue is ON and will receive messages, however as it's ACTIVATION STATUS=OFF messages will be held.

To change the "message type" handled use the ALTER SERVICE statement...

70-433 SQL Server - Database Mail (based on SMTP)

2009-09-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

Configured by the "Database Mail Configuration Wizard": SMTP accounts, security settings, system parameters ...

sysmail_delete_mailitems_sp -- houeskeeping typically based on sent_before (i.e. date sent) and sent_status (e.g. has the mail been 'sent')

sp_send_dbmail -- stored procedure to send email

NB The older SQL Mail was based on MAPI profiles and is harder to configure and administrate - Database Mail was introduced in SQL2005

70-433 SQL Server - changetable

2009-09-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

Setting up a CHANGETABLE

Standard change tracking for developers ...

alter table employee enable change_tracking with (track_columns_updated = ON);

select e.empID, e2.salary FROM (CHANGETABLE(CHANGES employee,NULL)) as e

JOIN dbo.classes e2 on e.empID = e2.empID;

you can also restrict your changetable results, for example, to check the salary changes for empID=42:

CHANGETABLE(VERSION employee, (empID), (42)) as e

70-433 SQL Server - change_tracking

2009-09-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

Configuring your DB for CHANGE_TRACKING

Basic configuration / housekeeping to be agreed with your DBA ...

ALTER DATABASE HR SET CHANGE_TRACKING = ON

(CHANGE_RETENTION = 40 DAYS, AUTO_CLEANUP = ON);

and to disable change tracking:

ALTER DATABASE HR SET CHANGE_TRACKING = OFF;

(NB the DBA or Developer should disable change tracking on your select tables as well)

70-433 SQL Server - full-text search and stoplists

2009-09-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

Create basic full-text search:

CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX on Courses (Summary) KEY INDEX courseID;

Now if you want to perform a full-text search

select courseID, summary from courses where contains (*, ' "SQL" AND "2008" ');

If you want to ignore a certain word, say 'CBT', you need to create a STOPLIST

CREATE FULLTEXT STOPLIST myStopList FROM SYSTEM STOPLIST;

ALTER FULLTEXT STOPLIST myStopList ADD 'CBT';

now when you create a full-text search, you can include the STOPLIST:

CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX on Courses (Summary) KEY INDEX CustID

WITH STOPLIST = myStopList;

70-433 SQL Server - Query() method on XML elements

2009-09-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

Setup example XML element:

declare @myXML xml

SET myXML = '

eve

matthey

stef

amar

miriam

tricky

Query example XML element:

Select @myXML.query('{/Root/employee[@employee=2]/surname}};

Expected results

amar

Reusing myXML, we could use sp_xml_preparedocument and OPENXML

DECLARE @docHandle int

EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument @docHandle, @myXML

70-433 SQL Server XML Indexes - basic usage examples

2009-09-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

The emp table has two columns "xml data type" columns: emp_xml & dept_xml

each column have it's own "PRIMARY XML INDEX" and then also multiple (secondary) "XML INDEX" (FOR PATH, FOR VALUE or FOR PROPERTY)

CREATE PRIMARY XML INDEX emp_xml_pri ON emp(emp_xml);

CREATE XML INDEX emp_xml_value ON emp(emp_xml) USING XML INDEX emp_xml_pri FOR VALUE;

CREATE XML INDEX emp_xml_path ON emp(emp_xml) USING XML INDEX emp_xml_pri FOR PATH;

CREATE XML INDEX emp_xml_prop ON emp(emp_xml) USING XML INDEX emp_xml_pri FOR PROPERTY;

70-433 SQL Server XML Indexes

2009-09-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

XML Indexes are a new concept for me, this Microsoft support page gives some good background.

Let start with the following slightly controversial (over-simplification):

Although not everyone would agree, one of the main reasons for the success of the relational database has been the inclusion of the SQL language. SQL is a set-based declarative language. As opposed to COBOL (or most .NET-based languages for that matter), when you use SQL, you tell the database what data you are looking for, rather than how to obtain that data. The SQL query processor determines the best plan to get the data you want and then retrieves the data for you. As query-processing engines mature, your SQL code will run faster and better (less I/O and CPU) without the developer making changes to the code. What development manager wouldn't be pleased to hear that programs will run faster and more efficiently with no changes to source code because the query engine gets better over time?

So how can we access data in XML format efficiently:

In the early days of XML, imperative programming (navigation through the XML DOM) was all the rage. The XQuery language in general and XQuery inside the database in particular make it possible for the query engine writers to approach the task of optimizing queries against XML. The chances of success are good because these folks have 20 years or so of practical experience optimizing SQL queries against the relational data model. The SQL Server 2005 implementation of XQuery over the built-in XML data type holds the same promise of a declarative language, with optimization through a query engine

The 70-433 exam appears to require basic familarity with the following XML functions:

Table 1. XML Data Type Functions

Name	Signature	Usage
exist	bit = X.exist(string xquery)	Checks for existence of nodes, returns 1 if any output returned from query, otherwise 0
value	scalar = X.value( string xquery, string SQL type)	Returns a SQL scalar value from a query cast to specified SQL data type
query	XML = X.query(string xquery)	Returns an XML data type instance from query
nodes	X.nodes(string xquery)	Table-value function used for XML to relational decomposition. Returns one row for each node that matches the query.
modify	X.modify(string xml-dml)	A mutator method that changes the XML value in place

The article goes on to detail how this mapped and represented in internal SQL Server database objects.. interesting stuff.

psychology and power of arms (AK-47)

2009-09-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

The following tells so much about the terrible power of the arms trade and the military.

Natasha Mitchell: The SPLA told you, there's a line in the book "always remember the gun is your mother and father now". Tell me about the relationship that you had as a boy to the AK-47 you were given. It was taller than you when you first got it.

Emmanuel Jal: An AK-47 gives you so much power when you hold it in your hand. With this thing I can shoot an elephant down. With this thing I'm equal as an adult, I can make an adult scream and beg for mercy. And the way it was brought to us was we were told: "this is your father and this is your mother". And it kind of makes sense. When you have an AK-47 you will not go hungry, you eat anywhere you pass, any village that you go to - you just sit under the tree and people will bring you food. That's the power it had. When you don't have it you become like a child again, you become vulnerable. And also the way we are trained with the movement is, it's like we idolise it, it's more important than your family members. If my father was against me I would fight my father, that's how we took it.

Emmanuel Jal is now a rapper, a powerful voice, rapping about his terrible experiences as a child soldier in the Sudanese Civil War.

This program is shocking a living hell in our time, but Emmanuel is able to communicate these living horrors with a great sense of humanity.

Normally I don't like rap but hear it works well.

Emmanuel Jal: Emma is my angel because she came at the right moment and she smuggled me, she risked her life smuggling me into Kenya.

Natasha Mitchell: I guess you wondered if she picked you or you picked her?

Natasha Mitchell: She decided to pick me, I don't know why me? Why did she pick me? I don't understand, I have no answer.

This one goes to Emma McCune
Angel to the rescue one afternoon
I'm here because you rescued me
I'm proud to carry your legacy
Thank you
Bless you
R I Peace

What would I be if Emma never rescued me?
What would I be?
What would I be, another starving refugee?
What would I be?
What would I be if Emma never rescued me?
Yeah e yeah yeah e yeah

gay icons: Noel Coward

2009-09-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

I understand why people might persceive Noel Coward as outdated - but he is a gay icon for me

This graphic captures the joy of Coward's world for me!!

Noel Coward’s Outdated Defiance

by James Kirchick

First published in The Washington Times, June 12, 2009

Noel Coward's "Design for Living" — now in revival by the Shakespeare Theatre Company — shocked audiences when it premiered on Broadway in 1933. It's not hard to see why.

The play, about a polyandrous relationship between two men and a woman, makes no apologies for its liberationist view of sex and relationships and could hardly be more direct in its sympathetic presentation of gay attachment. "Design for Living" was considered so risque that Coward had to wait until 1939 before staging a production in London for fear of offending British censors.

Seen today, the play shocks, but for an altogether different reason: Its message is so outdated that it's bewildering why any theater would put it on except for its curatorial interest as a period artifact.

http://www.indegayforum.org/news/show/31850.html

Fixed server role	Description
sysadmin	Can perform any activity in SQL Server
serveradmin	Can set server-wide configuration options, shut down the server
setupadmin	Can manage linked servers and startup procedures
securityadmin	Can manage logins and CREATE DATABASE permissions, also read error logs and change passwords
processadmin	Can manage processes running in SQL Server
dbcreator	Can create, alter, and drop databases
diskadmin	Can manage disk files
bulkadmin	Can execute BULK INSERT statements

sp_addsrvrolemember	Adds a login as a member of a fixed server role
sp_dropsrvrolemember	Removes an SQL Server login, Windows user or group from a fixed server role
sp_helpsrvrole	Returns a list of the fixed server roles
sp_helpsrvrolemember	Returns information about the members of fixed server roles
sp_srvrolepermission	Returns the permissions applied to a fixed server role

Fixed database role	Description
db_owner	Has all permissions in the database
db_accessadmin	Can add or remove user IDs
db_securityadmin	Can manage all permissions, object ownerships, roles and role memberships
db_ddladmin	Can issue ALL DDL, but cannot issue GRANT, REVOKE, or DENY statements
db_backupoperator	Can issue DBCC, CHECKPOINT, and BACKUP statements
db_datareader	Can select all data from any user table in the database
db_datawriter	Can modify any data in any user table in the database
db_denydatareader	Cannot select any data from any user table in the database
db_denydatawriter	Cannot modify any data in any user table in the database

sp_addrole	Creates a new database role in the current database
sp_addrolemember	Adds a user to an existing database role in the current database
sp_dbfixedrolepermission	Displays permissions for each fixed database role
sp_droprole	Removes a database role from the current database
sp_helpdbfixedrole	Returns a list of fixed database roles
sp_helprole	Returns information about the roles in the current database
sp_helprolemember	Returns information about the members of a role in the current database
sp_droprolemember	Removes users from the specified role in the current database

Column name	Data type	Description
database_id	smallint	ID of the database on which the table or view is defined.
object_id	int	ID of the table or view on which the index is defined
index_id	int	ID of the index.
user_seeks	bigint	Number of seeks by user queries.
user_scans	bigint	Number of scans by user queries.
user_lookups	bigint	Number of bookmark lookups by user queries.
user_updates	bigint	Number of updates by user queries.
last_user_seek	datetime	Time of last user seek
last_user_scan	datetime	Time of last user scan.
last_user_lookup	datetime	Time of last user lookup.
last_user_update	datetime	Time of last user update.
system_seeks	bigint	Number of seeks by system queries.
system_scans	bigint	Number of scans by system queries.
system_lookups	bigint	Number of lookups by system queries.
system_updates	bigint	Number of updates by system queries.
last_system_seek	datetime	Time of last system seek.
last_system_scan	datetime	Time of last system scan.
last_system_lookup	datetime	Time of last system lookup.
last_system_update	datetime	Time of last system update.

Topic	Description
Deadlock Graph Event Class	Provides an XML description of a deadlock.
Lock:Acquired Event Class	Indicates that a lock has been acquired on a resource, such as a row in a table.
Lock:Cancel Event Class	Tracks requests for locks that were canceled before the lock was acquired (for example, to prevent a deadlock).
Lock:Deadlock Chain Event Class	Monitors when deadlock conditions occur and which objects are involved.
Lock:Deadlock Event Class	Tracks when a transaction has requested a lock on a resource already locked by another transaction, resulting in a deadlock.
Lock:Escalation Event Class	Indicates that a finer-grained lock has been converted to a coarser-grained lock.
Lock:Released Event Class	Tracks when a lock is released.
Lock:Timeout (timeout > 0) Event Class	Tracks when lock requests cannot be completed because another transaction has a blocking lock on the requested resource. This event occurs only in situations where the lock time-out value is greater than zero.
Lock:Timeout Event Class