W.A.I.T

When wanting to talk WAIT: That is, ask the question "Why am I talking?"

Non-NISO duration standard

My peers have adopted the following non-NISO duration standard:

• Shortly is less than 17 mins or 29 mins.
• In-a-bit is less than 29 mins.
• Half-hour is 30 to 50 mins.
• In-a-while is about 1 hour.
• Later is about 2 hours.

YMMV.

Too little skeuomorphism!

I find iOS 7's UI boring rather than utilitarian and/or minimalistic. I am, frankly, surprised at my reaction to this utilitarianism as it is something I have wanted for some time. How I have it, I think Apple went too far in removing the skeuomorphism.

Shipping container building inspiration

Found at http://cubiclerefugee.tumblr.com/post/596714844

I am Geordi LaForge. Really!?

Your results: You are Geordi LaForge. You work well with others and often fix problems quickly. Your romantic relationships are often bungled.

Geordi LaForge 70% Spock 64% Jean-Luc Picard 60% Mr. Scott 60% Beverly Crusher 60% Worf 55% Chekov 55% James T. Kirk (Captain) 50% Data 46% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 45% Uhura 40% Will Riker 40% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 35% Mr. Sulu 10% Deanna Troi 10%

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test

Using a compound index to reduce lock timeouts with MySql 5.5

If you use MySql 5.5 and have a hot table where updates and inserts fail due to lock timeout then the following will be of interest. The SQL statement

update t1 set c1 = ? where c2 = ?

Will (effectively) lock the WHOLE TABLE unless there is a compound index on the columns used in the update. Adding the index

create index i1 on t1(c2,c1)

will allow MySql's locking mechanism to only lock the records touched by the update and not the whole table.

My public library (and, I am guessing, so does yours) uses X's library catalog web application. If free time were more I would enumerate its comprehensive collection of poor to dreadful user-experiences. But I don't and so I won't. This posting is a trivial example of

Chain of Command and the storm in a tea cup.

I took down my post about my objection to having advertising in the opening pages of the Chain of Command rules book. While I continue to object to having advertising at the front of a paid product I now know better that my expectations are quite different (even quaint) than the general expectations of both rules buyers and rules publishers. If you want to know more about how this played out, then see the thread on Too Fat Lardies Yahoo! group (this is a private group so you must join to see postings).