Matt’s Journal

How evil are you?

Posted by Matt under General

You Are 70% Evil

You are very evil. And you’re too evil to care. Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

I passed!

Posted by Matt under General

Yep, I passed my driving test.

It’s taken 5 years since I started driving (with Uni and lack of £££) to actually do it but now I have done it I am happy as a pig in shit!

The test itself was one of the easier routes, they took me around a lot of roundabouts and down dual-carriageways so that was pretty straightfoward. I did however make a mistake (unnecessary lane change) that I thought at the time was going to cost me my pass but luckily that was judged as a minor. My manoeuvres were Turn in the road, emergency stop and reverse bay parking, all of them were a piece of piss.

Now, I just need to get my own car!

Ace.

SQL can go suck my balls…

Posted by Matt under Angry, General, Tech, Work

Wow, what a day. Today was spent wrestling with a half ready database trying to output the correct entries for a paper mailing we were due to send out. We have roughly 17,000 contacts and I we wanted to setup a query so that the mailout was sent to a) Everybody who had been added to the database in the last 3 years b) Was flagged in the database as being eligible for a mailing c) Had to be in either Europe or the UK (basically excluding the world).

The query itself was fine, the results however werent. We had people who were flagged as “Do Not Mail” in our old database cropping up in the query results on the new one. Going in to check, the flag is not there…..great.

I get on the phone and talk to the database company, they say they will look into it and then come back 30mins later saying it is all fixed, apparently there were only 35 people in the query who came up as this. This was wrong, we found people who had no address being touted for the mailing, myself included for some unknown reason, it was complete bollocks.

The thing is, it got to the point where I started to think “is it me?!” and was so frustrated I sat on the floor and had 10 minutes time out from it all. People in the office were saying that they had never seen me like it before, I had got so frustrated that I was sitting on the floor trying to take time out.

I had never used the old database, I only picked up the new one this Monday and I was knee deep in Admin functions that I really wasnt prepared for, I’m the web designer for heavens sake!

I said to my boss “I am going to go home, listen to some loud music and destroy something beautiful”, that was greeted with some laughter, so that brightened me up.

I did go home and listen to some music, I blasted some Panic at the Disco! on my iPod on the way home but unfortunately didnt get the chance to destroy something beautiful.

If you are wondering what that SQL statement looked like, here you go:

SELECT A1.CONTACTID, A1.NAMELF, A2.ADDRESS1 A2_ADDRESS1, A2.ADDRESS2 A2_ADDRESS2, A2.ADDRESS3 A2_ADDRESS3, A2.CITY A2_CITY, A2.STATE A2_STATE, A2.POSTALCODE A2_POSTALCODE, A2.COUNTRY A2_COUNTRY, A1.NAMELF FROM CONTACT A1 INNER JOIN ACCOUNT A4 ON (A1.ACCOUNTID=A4.ACCOUNTID) INNER JOIN ADDRESS A2 ON (A1.ADDRESSID=A2.ADDRESSID) LEFT OUTER JOIN E1TB_CONEXT A3 ON (A1.CONTACTID=A3.CONTACTID) WHERE (A3.ACCEPT_MAILING=’T') AND (A4.CREATEDATE>:DateTime0) AND ((A2.ROUTING<>‘World’) OR (A2.ROUTING IS NULL OR A2.ROUTING = ”)) ORDER BY A1.NAMELF ASC

I am also trying to write a small piece for the NewOrder Newsletter but I just cant get round to it, sorry to all those involved for my lack of creativity, im sure you all understand the situation im in as you have probably had the same or worse!

Off to bed, im shattered.

Shadowbane…

Posted by Matt under General

After a little browse through Digg, I found a link to an old-ish MMORPG called Shadowbane that is now free! This is taken from the official site:

Many members of the Shadowbane Community have already noticed that a change has occured to the Billing System today; one that allows players to play for free!

There will be a more in-depth announcement coming soon but, in the meanwhile, I wanted to let our community know that this is not an error. Existing users can now open up their Account Manager and their accounts will now be working, allowing them to play Shadowbane for free! This does include those who had previously canceled accounts!

In addition, those who wish to try out Shadowbane for the first time will also be able to. All you have to do is create a new ubi.com account and then click on Add a Subscription, and you will have free access to the lands of Aerynth! This is not a Free-Trial subscription and it will not run out in 15-days. This is completely free!

Seeing as it is free, I may have to give it a try. Anyone want to join up? Skudd? Nabiy?

What celeb do you look like?

Posted by Matt under General

Thanks to MyHeritage you can now find out what celebrity you look like (both male and female!).

Here are my results:

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Apparently I look like Chuck Norris and Ernest Hemmingway!

Find out who you look like..

Digg

Posted by Matt under General

I have been actively using Digg for about 3-4 months or so now, it is a very nifty technology news website that displays news. The twist with this particular news site is that the news stories displayed are dictated by the website users actions. Users will “Digg” a news story that they like or think is useful to other people so that it will be elevated to the front page, basically a voting platform for the users.

Although I have been using the site for a while, I didnt register. This was mainly because I didnt want to have another messageboard type thing to waste my time with. However, recently I did sign up and decided to comment on some of the submissions, this is where Digg managed to frustrate the hell out of me:

1. Digg has the “Web 2.0″ bug, everything posted is touted to be Web 2.0 when it quite clearly isnt. Suddenly now RSS is popular and AJAX is “cool”, Web 2.0 flourishes. Web 2.0 is “a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.” Yeah right, Web 2.0 is RSS, CSS, Blogging and Big Fonts. Nothing more.
2. You decide to post a comment on a link, they now have a system where you can “Digg” other users comments. If you make a comment (whether it be valid or not) against Digg or Kevin Rose (the creator), say a link is old, post something humourous then you can expect a negative thumbs down (an anti-Digg?!). These threads are then no longer visible even if they have merit.
3. Its basically a copy of Slashdot, Cnet et al news wise. You get all the same front pages as you do on Slashdot.
4. The site is slow as buggery.
5. Everyone and his dog now think they are the be-all and end-all, they “No-Digg” and then stick around for a response. Tr0ll.
6. The news stories are real stories linked through someone’s blog to gain traffic.

I will use it because it gives some great links, it just so happens that I dislike the community.