Before I start I just want to say that much of this post is mere speculation on my part and not specifically targeted at Currys. They just happen to be the catalyst and example for this post. A few months back I ordered a new tumble drier online from Currys to replace an aging one that my family have long […]
Read MoreIf you haven’t heard of the name before, you must have seen what it does at some point. FIGlet which was first developed in the ’90s is a freeware large ASCII art generator which generates text from standard characters. It had quite a number of fonts contributed by others during the first few years but not many in recent years […]
Read MoreOver the years with each release I’m often impressed by some of the features contained in SQL server but every so often, I start to use a feature that I haven’t used before and I’m blown away by just how good that particular feature is. Sometimes it is the sheer power/flexibility of the feature that impresses me or sometimes it […]
Read MoreHave you ever had that moment where you have gone “Geez.. I wish I’d learnt this stuff ages ago” after realising just how much more productive you’d have been since!! That happened to me recently after taking literally a few minutes to learn more about the find/replace regular expression option in SSMS.. It has long been on my list of […]
Read MoreI’ve been blogging for a couple of years now and although I’ve never been a prolific blogger (and never will!), I like to get at least one post out a month. However next year I’m going to try to up my game a little with a couple of ideas that I’ve got to try and take my blog and contribution […]
Read MoreEdit: Please also see in depth comment from Brent Ozar on my main site which extends the query provided below by adding extra columns to give the data more context and general advice when interpreting this type of data. Edit (03-Apr-2017): Unfortunately comments have been lost when blog site was migrated to a new platform Just a quick post this […]
Read MoreThis is a personal pet hate of mine.. Mixing HTML formatting tags directly with XML that aren’t escaped or contained within a CDATA section. Sure it is all perfectly valid XML at the end of the day, but it makes working with it a bit harder as each section of text between each <BR/> tag is treated as a separate […]
Read MoreI feel rather flat today. I passed the 3rd entry level 2012 exam a few hours ago, data warehousing to make me an MCSA, but I feel like I’m looking at a dead end. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fairly happy that I passed the exam which incidentally seem to have a much higher than normal number of questions on […]
Read MoreEdit (03-Apr-2017): The Connect item was closed a while back with a “won’t fix” status Whilst doing some ad-hoc work on some data on a 2012 SP1 instance I came across an issue with the SQL server raising a sev 20 error with a script that I was attempting to run. The work that I was doing was that I […]
Read MoreI’ve been using the backup to azure feature for a short while now and I really like it. Shows I think as this is my 4th blog post on the subject this year! This feature has reduced my stress levels with regard to secure offsite backups. However, so far I have two gripes with it. Firstly, if there is an […]
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