Ad-free CBC? How about ad-free CBC North at least?
An article in today's Globe & Mail suggests that CBC television should drop advertising and concentrate on news, documentaries, and "smart little sitcoms...
When to use a relational database: ternary logic
This post is the third in a series of arguments for using relational databases instead of, say, flat files. As I mentioned previously, I'm trying to steer cl...
Steel Cage Death Match: Friendly Giant vs. Mssrs. Dressup, Hooper, and Rogers
Friendly wins hands down. The three misters would just have enough time to look up, waaaay up, at their foe before he grabbed all three by the scruffs of the...
Whoa. Lego Leia minifig cleavage
Another gander at page 3 (ahem) of the Lego catalogue that arrived yesterday reveals that Jabba's Sail Barge comes with the slave girl metal bikini version o...
New! Lego! Catalogue!
The Summer 2006 Lego catalogue arrived in the mail today. As usual, it's brim-full of over-specialized Star Wars, weirdo mechanized alien, and now Batman, ki...
When to use a relational database: deleting records
My earlier post in this series, "When not to use a relational database", offered two conditions summarizing the circumstances under which you do not need to ...
The letter L. How do you spell that?
For a short time in the early '90s, I administered a small SCO UNIX system (from the Santa Cruz Operation, not the litigious SCO Group) while working for Nes...
When not to use a relational database
First in a series. I regularly teach a relational database course, and also design and administer databases. I've been dealing with them ever since I was plu...
What not to ask the computer programming instructor
"Why do we have to deal with all of these ones and zeros?" In the student's defence, bitwise and shifting operators aren't something you often see in a first...
“Is your computer a pretty blue colour?”
God bless the computer support technicians, every one. I've never worked in tech support, but I have filled in for vacationing/ill/hiding supportfolk and, as...
Apache and the case of the spurious permission snafu
(I especially enjoy the term "snafu", all the more so because of Snafu and Tarfu lakes -- "named with a WWII sensibility" -- on the highway south from Jake's...
DispAdapter lives
I've been rebuilding my main PC after its biennial nuke & pave -- a rather severe form of housekeeping. It's a painstaking ordeal but it does give me a c...