“In Britain’s hi-tech industries, barely one in five workers is female. Genevieve Roberts meets the bright sparks from last week’s BlackBerry Women & Technology Awards to hear how they make their presence felt”
Indy
Category Archives: geek
“It is the 21st century, and we are all each other’s Hummel figurines.” (Wired)
Winter is definitely coming. It’s going to be grey and rainy and cold and damp and miserable for months. Last night’s sunset was spectacular – the sky was filled with gold – but it was dark really early.
But, in cheery geek news, students in Australia are coming up with innovative applications for mobile phone-based technologies.
I love phpMyAdmin’s Bookmarked SQL queries.
I found this snippet of sql that closes comments on blog posts that are more than 14 days old somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. Luckily, I’d stored it as a bookmark on the SQL tab of the table interface.
And for reference, the code is below. Change the interval to suit.
UPDATE mt_entry SET entry_allow_comments = 2, entry_allow_pings = 0 WHERE entry_created_on < date_add(curdate(), interval -14 day)
PostgreSQL vs. SQL Server, Oracle
I’d like to see a comparison with MySQL on similar terms, but that’s possibly only because PostgreSQL admins tend to be more beardy and grumpy than any others. More rationally, I suppose MySQL tends to be a little more accessible and has become a de facto standard as part of LAMP applications.
It’s a shame they don’t expand on ‘somewhat more limited’ stored procedures, because they can be such an important DBA/developer tool, particularly in a multi-tier environment.
And while Microsoft have some good tools, they also have lots that suck. And Oracle’s tools are ok but are supplemented by free or cheap third-party tools.
“We’re Greenpeace, and we want a fresh green Apple.
Right now, poison Apples full of chemicals (like toxic flame retardants, and polyvinyl chloride) are being sold worldwide. When they’re tossed, they usually end up at the fingertips of children in China, India and other developing-world countries. They dismantle them for parts, and are exposed to a dangerous toxic cocktail that threatens their health and the environment.”
Write to Apple to demand they:
- Remove the worst toxic chemicals from all their products and production lines.
- Offer and promote free “take-back” for all their products everywhere they are sold.
via greenmyapple.
I added this to the form letter part:
“I’ve been a Mac fan for a long time, and I was really disturbed to learn that Apple scored so badly on environmental impact. As much as I’ve loved my Macs, if I have to choose between my green values and my Mac, my green values are going to win.”
Entirely too relevant this week: procrastination.
“If you want to work on big things, you seem to have to trick yourself into doing it.”
And this is far too true: “I’ve wondered a lot about why startups are most productive at the very beginning, when they’re just a couple guys in an apartment. The main reason may be that there’s no one to interrupt them yet. In theory it’s good when the founders finally get enough money to hire people to do some of the work for them. But it may be better to be overworked than interrupted. Once you dilute a startup with ordinary office workers– with type-B procrastinators– the whole company starts to resonate at their frequency. They’re interrupt-driven, and soon you are too.”
And frustratingly, “What’s the best thing you could be working on, and why aren’t you?”. Based on that, I must also read You and Your Research, where the questions, “What are the most important problems in your field?”, “Are you working on one of them?” and “Why not?” are posed.
While doing some research on podcasts for work, I came across this really useful BBC online courses site.
“Internet firms have been criticised by UK MPs for “collaborating” with state censorship of the web in China.
Businesses such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo blocking some information was “morally unacceptable”, the Commons foreign affairs committee said.” BBC
Having seen that even in Ukraine some cafes seem to block gay or lesbian content, it’s clear that internet censorship is still an important issue that has a real effect on the lives of a country’s citizens.
In other news, while looking for an internet cafe, I managed to stumble across one of the very few gay bars or clubs in Kiev. Woo!
(And in other news, Stary Kiev, listed as a ‘gay cafe’, has closed).
Tomorrow is Ukraine Indepedence Day (Den Nezalezhnosti), so it’s a great day to be in Kiev. IYP says, “to give you an idea of what Independence Day on the streets of Kyiv is like, imagine a cross between a huge outdoor rock concert and civil unrest.”
Train to Kamynets-Podilsky tomorrow night.