D Quine

Posted on 29th December, 2011 by Xophmeister

I have taken it upon myself to learn the D programming language: My motivation for doing so is involved, but bear with me!
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Posted in D, Random, Software Engineering | 2 Comments

Sanitising with Insanity

Posted on 15th December, 2011 by Xophmeister

I do a lot of hacking around in an Oracle database and my chosen tool to interrogate the data is Oracle SQL Developer. Sometimes, I have to transfer the contents of one table into another schema and, because I don’t have the necessary permissions, I have to do this by taking a script backup and then restoring it (i.e., running it against the other schema).

Unfortunately, SQL Developer’s SQL backups cannot, in general, be run without modification to restore successfully. As such, because I have been learning to use my editor of choice more powerfully, I have written a VIM macro to sanitise SQL Developer’s output.
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Posted in Day Job, Oracle, SQL Developer, VIM | 1 Comment

Zeitgeist

Posted on 30th November, 2011 by Xophmeister

A short story that will probably get me put on the “No Fly” list.
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Cycling in the City

Posted on 5th November, 2011 by Xophmeister

I regularly commute through England’s metropolis: a 40km round trip that takes me about the same time as the train, but for free and without the claustrophobic cattle class that is South West Trains nor the carcinogenic underworld of the Tube. However, as a road cyclist who cut his teeth in the countryside — literally: I chipped a tooth, which has since been removed, in an accident! — the whole affair is less than ideal.
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Posted in Cycling, Rants | 1 Comment

Counting with Subquery Factoring

Posted on 25th October, 2011 by Xophmeister

This is fairly trivial, but I thought I’d post it anyway! It’s a PL/SQL script I wrote using subquery factoring to count in natural language: from 1 to 10,000. (It will go higher, but there are gaps after 10,000.)

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Posted in Oracle, PL/SQL, Random | Leave a comment

Have a Seat

Posted on 25th October, 2011 by Xophmeister

I sat. It had been a while, so I was not anticipating much. I suppose, were I more practised, I shouldn’t expect anything. My knees were reluctant to bend into a half lotus, but once achieved, I was straight and free on my cushion. I shut my eyes, relaxed the muscles in my neck and shoulders, and breathed. Deeply.

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Posted in Personal, Writing | Leave a comment

Everything You Wanted to Know About TeX, but Were Too Afraid to Ask

Posted on 24th October, 2011 by Xophmeister

My previous website was well-known for perhaps one thing: a LaTeX tutorial which I wrote when I was young and foolish. Despite being fairly rudimentary and not especially well-written, it gained a lot of credence — there was a time when it was the top Google result for “TeX tutorial”; I kid you not! — and because the spiders have picked up upon the HTTP 301, I have decided to edit and reinstate the best bits in this one enormous post. (I’m a traffic whore; what can  I say!?) Moreover, I will probably write further tutorials in time, so keep an eye out on my LaTeX category (or even subscribe to it, if you’re feeling particularly saucy)!

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Posted in LaTeX | 3 Comments

Computer Science?

Posted on 15th October, 2011 by Xophmeister

You’ll have noticed that I have a Computer Science category on this blog. My question here, however, is: Why is Computer Science called “Computer Science”?

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Posted in Computer Science, Rants, Science | 2 Comments

If Everyone Jumped Off A Cliff, Would You Too?…

Posted on 13th October, 2011 by Xophmeister

Damn right, I would!

My First SQL Sudoku Solver

Writing a sudoku solver in SQL (or, at least, using the RDBMS as a platform) seems to have become a rite de passage; so who am I to argue? While my solution isn’t particularly sophisticated — using some exotic Oracle functionality, it’s been done in a single select — and only works by process of elimination (so it cannot solve every puzzle), it does the job and is pretty straightforward to comprehend.

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Posted in Distractions, Oracle, PL/SQL, Random, SQL | Tagged | Leave a comment

A New Home!

Posted on 10th October, 2011 by Xophmeister

Xophmeister’s World is now self-hosted at xoph.co.

That is all.

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