Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 38,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 14 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

It started up innocently enough actually. My wife and I went to Home Depot to pick up some home improvement (that’s a very hopeful word when you’re not the best wood worker) supplies last night. So we take our paint, brushes and a 8 by 4 foot beadboard and there we stand a little confused as we look at our new Chevy Cruze in the parking lot and then back at the beadboard. Hmmmmm.

So we head back in and have the helpful guy with the orange apron cut the panel in two — we need two panels anyway. When we get our noisy trolley back to the car we still can’t fit them in. After sending my wife to the next stop in hommage to our money pit I returned to the store for the third time. I purchased some work gloves, as it was a cold night, and then embarked on my way home.

It was only a few kilometres to get home anyway. In fact, a leg of the trans-Canada trail happens to pass right by the Home Depot in Guelph starting beside a railway line. I’ve biked this path many times. And only a few metres from the road the trail dekes into the Woodlawn Cemetery along one of the narrow roads through it that parallels the railroad.

So there you go. That probably explains a lot actually. I could say I didn’t know about the van a friend of mine told me I could rent there to bring stuff home. Or I could probably have had it delivered. Or called a friend. But not me. I chose a different path, through a dark cemetery on a cloudy night.

It’s hard to encapsulate a book that is so large in scope and so enjoyable to read. Your intellect revolts at trying to peg it down by mere description and emotionally… well… I just didn’t want the thing to end. When I found, on his site, someone had actually been inspired enough to create music (http://nealstephenson.com/anathem/music….) for Anathem I was amazed but, now that I’m done, I understand.

What can I say that you can’t read elsewhere. I might warn you that Stephenson is a master world builder and so it takes effort to get out of this world and into his. But, by God, it’s worth the effort!

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Here’s my script:

--all dbs over 25% full with sizes too
select db.name as [db_name], mf.name,
'dbSizeinMB' =
cast (cast (mf.size*1.0/128 as decimal(9,2)) as nvarchar(30)),
'MaxSizeinMB' =
case mf.max_size
when 0 then 'no growth is allowed.'
when -1 then 'autogrowth is on.'
when 268435456
then 'log file will grow to a maximum size of 2 tb.'
else cast (cast (mf.max_size*1.0/128 as decimal(9,2)) as nvarchar(30))
end,
'PercentageSize' =
case mf.max_size
when 0 then 'no growth is allowed.'
when -1 then 'autogrowth is on.'
else cast (cast(((mf.size*1.0)/(mf.max_size*1.0))*100 as decimal(9,2)) as nvarchar(30))
end
from sys.master_files mf, sys.databases db
where mf.database_id = db.database_id and ((mf.size*1.0)/(mf.max_size*1.0)*100) > 25.0
order by db.name

Of course you don’t always have time to run a script to check up this so I have a maintenance plan set up with this content that e-mails be the report every day at 6AM:

--all db files over 25% full with sizes too
DECLARE @tableHTML NVARCHAR(MAX) ;

EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail
@profile_name ='My Profile',
@recipients=N'me@provider.com;you@provider.com',
@subject = 'MyServer db files over 25% max size',
@body = @tableHTML,
@body_format = 'HTML' ;

This applies to SQL Server 2005 and newer.

I admit I am a Halo fan but since his novel Eon I’ve been a Greg Bear follower. I was surprised but sceptical to see these two put together but I was willing to give it a chance.

The first few chapters didn’t make sense at first since it implied space-faring humans were involved with Forerunners 100,000 years ago. But eventually that was explained and the idea grew on me.

It’s no Eon, but that may not be fair as it isn’t a pure Bear invention. I certainly enjoyed it enough to want to read the next in the trilogy. I liked the revelation at the end.

Even so, I’d say this is only for diehard Halo fans.

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Awesome. The code for that can be seen by hovering over it with a mouse. Here it is in text if you want to try it (you need a ‘dollar sign’latex’space’ in front of it and a ’dollar sign’ after):

\huge\sum_{t=1}^{+\infty}\frac{1}{n^2}

I learned I could add in at the Polymath blog but the WordPress announcement can be found here.

Sawyer bills his WWW trilogy as the story of an optimistic singularity event. Where an AI achieves awareness but doesn’t go bad. Of course, it’s never so simple in a story by Canada’s dean of science fiction. Webmind has ‘his’ (he seems a him to me) growing pains especially when the powers that be in China decide to sever him again with a firewall.
I think it’s appropriate that the first e-book I have ever purchased is excellent science fiction like this. The formatting on the kobo app on my iPad had many faults but this final book of this series was such a page turner I found myself not caring.
This book is well worth the price of admission.

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1. order in a good pizza and eat it
2. say the following mantra: “Hallelugah I’m me!”
3. kiss the shallow person in the mirror

Or just read a good book. I can’t believe this was so popular. Who’d be taken in by this sham?
At one point she is imagining a conversation with her former husband who still loves her. She tells him ‘So Love Me’. Wow! That’s empathy for the ages alright.
Definitely not recommended.