One of the first tasks when loading data from a backup is to match up the
users in the database with the ones defined in SQL Server. Getting data
from clients continually and having to do this you would think I would
remember it but unfortunately no, I have to lookup it up each time.
So this one is mainly for me!!!
EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Update_One', 'john', 'john'
I know that this is primarily a technical blog but I have hobbies outside the software world. As Scott Hanselman says, follow the whole person
One of them is following football (soccer) and especially my home team Glasgow Rangers. They have been through a turbulent year with some of it being deserved and some..not.
Today a tribunal decided that although Rangers used EBTs without informing the Football Association their punishment should be a fine rather than getting stripped of titles. This seems like a fair decision to me and I am glad that yet another cloud hanging over the club is being lifted.
For too long now matters outside I what happens on the pitch have dominated the newspapers in Scotland. After the dust settles from this decision it’s time to start watching the beautiful game without interruption again.
Ofcourse for it to be beautiful our defense needs to stop leaking goals!!!
Back to work!
A bunch had been said about Yahoo, more specifically Marissa Mayer, changing their policy on Remote workers. I am sure that it was done for reasons that made sense at the time but it is the wrong call.
I have worked remotely for almost 8 years now after working in an office for 8 years and I can say this, in most areas working remotely wins. This is especially true for software companies where we use online tools for collaboration.
From my perspective most people working remotely do longer hours and are hyper aware of making sure that they get their work done. If some people in Yahoo have not been doing their job then they should have been fired regardless of working remotely or not.
Making people come into an office sounds like a knee jerk reaction to me. Breaching contracts or at least promises in the process is just wrong.
Microsoft, Facebook and Google are just about to get some good employees and Yahoo deserves it.
I have been getting up early again for the past few days and reverted back to an application I have been using for a while.
The application is called Dark Room. It is a c# word processing application that has a black background and green text. I know it sounds strange but when your eyes have not adjusted to the light yet this app is wonderful.
I use it for about 30 mins until I can brave using normal bright tools like Outlook. I then simple copy the email(s) I have been writing into new outlook messages and send them. Done.
I stopped doing this a while back as it was hard to type properly but with my new laptop and it’s backlit keyboard (just bright enough – not too bright!) it makes sense again.
I have seen this error so many times that I thought I would note down the resolution (for me anyway)
When logging into the database you get:
ORA-01034: ORACLE not available. ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist
To solve you connect to sqlplus as follows:
sqlplus /nolog
Login in as a sys dba:
connect sys/sys as sysdba
When connected, startup the database using:
startup
The database will startup and can be connected to as normal.
Sitting at a desk for hours a day is not the best thing for your body so in the past few years I have been doing Crossfit at a local gym. It’s been good. The workouts are great and I am much healthier than I was 2 years ago.
When you get in that community people look after each other and help one another during workouts. They also encourage you to try out the huge array of races and competitions there are every month.
With a bunch of friends my wife and I decide that we would do the Spartan Race in Miami. We all know that we would not be the fastest doing it, far from it. We just had one goal: finishing.
The furthest that I have ran is 5k on road so doing 8+ miles on rough terrain with 20+ obstacles was always going to be interesting.
Things looked pretty good up until just after mile 4 during a climb of a cargo net I could feel my calfs (both of them starting to cramp). I got up and down the cargo net just fine but not long after that (probably near 5 miles) both legs cramped on me at the same time. It took a good 15 minutes of gentle persuasion to get them to the point that I could walk again.
After that it was a LONG 3-4 miles walking and doing obstacles to the finish line. I am glad that I did the race and that I finished but it’s shown that I need to do more running. I found the obstacles easy enough (Crossfit trains you for that) but 8+ miles running especially trail running is just not in me right now.
We all still had fun and the beer at the end never tasted better!
Well there you have it. 15 years have gone by and I hardly even noticed it. I have been developing, consulting and a whole host of other tasks in the Mobile GIS world now for 15 years!
Back on January 5th 1998 when I joined Conic Systems Ltd. little did I know that I would be still in this industry.
Times have changed in the GIS industry over the past 15 years. I started developing in VB3 and C++ (can’t even remember what rev number!) using an in-house graphics/GIS engine which still to this day has some great ideas in it. It was the precursor to MapObjects and still has users.
Smallworld was dominant in the utility market at that time and the link between Smallworld and Conic took up the most of my time.
That was working life until, in very quick succession, Tadpole bought Conic and we moved from a proprietary engine to using ArcObjects. I never delved into Avenue programming and have only seen ArcView 3.x about 3 times in my whole life!
Now we are in an age of server based GIS with mobile devices syncing when they can.
Users have moved from laptops to iOS and android devices and expect fit fit purpose applications.
I happened upon the GIS industry and am glad that I did.
John Selkirk 