Marc's tumblings and mumblings

Summer sounds and a grainy shot

Fiesta drums at our doorstep

Audio impression of San Juan night

Note to self: Listing all tables and fields on Informix via SQL

SELECT TRIM(t.tabname) || '.' || TRIM(c.colname) AS table_dot_column
  FROM "informix".systables AS t, "informix".syscolumns AS c
 WHERE t.tabid = c.tabid
   AND t.tabtype = 'T'
   AND t.tabid >= 100
 ORDER BY t.tabname, c.colno

Forgot about the source - otherwise I’d link to it, of course. Sorry!

Note to self: Firefox 4 must-have extensions

1. Adblock Plus
2. BetterPrivacy
3. Firebug
4. Firefox 4 UI Fixer
5. IE Tab Plus
6. NoScript
7. NoSquint (for hires devices)
8. Personal Titlebar
9. RSS Icon
10. Tab Mix Plus
11. Zotero

Either no. 4 or no. 8 may be unnecessary to achieve the desired “compact classical” look and feel.

Avoid Alicante Airport for arrivals with small children or the elderly

With the new (only) terminal, you’ll have to walk many (!) hundreds of metres to pick up baby carts, seats, walking aids for the elderly, etc. It’s actually right where you pick up all your luggage anyway. To make matters worse, arrivals architecture is vaguely reminiscent of Alcatraz, the Roman coliseum, or the arenas “The Running Man” (the latter probably being the most suitable comparison, as you’ll be doing a lot of running in a futuristically modern environment).

Last but not least, today’s special needs luggage seemed to be consistently arriving well after all the normal luggage. At least this I expect to be ironed out in a matter of days rather than weeks. And until the distances thing is solved in a suitable manner, my recommendation holds: If you can avoid Alicante Airport for arrivals with small children or the elderly, do so by all means.

P.S.: Departures seemed just fine, quite like my experience in Beijing: Ugly welcome, but pleasant departure. Same ironic design priorities, it seems. Well, forcing your way through (NOT past!) a duty free shop in Alicante is quite silly, too.

P.P.S.: Alicante “arrival shopping” was even more of an irony, at least in tonight’s roles, starring my wife and myself as the back-ached parents.

When 2011 dawned in Egypt’s land: Let my people vote, Oppress’d so hard they could not stand, Let my People vote.

Go down, Mohamed, Way down in Egypt land, Tell old Mubarak, To let my people vote.

21st century parenting rant

My daughter’s had her first CD-ROM homework today - making this actually more of a late 20th century parenting rant. Anyhoo, so the first thing I get to hear after what has been a comparatively long working day was “Can you please check her computer, she cannot do her homework.” Oh right.

So I go eliminating errors: first, the Windows-only educational piece apparently needs admin rights - nice for kids to have, aren’t they? Second, the standard resolution of her netbook (1024x800) is not supported, brilliant. Third, and after switching to another (Windows) PC, the programme gets stuck every few minutes, leading to various repetitions of the (unskippable) 30 sec opening dialogue. The problem? Read errors of the CD drive, only fixed by switching devices again (thank God this is a somewhat geeky household…).

Um, this CD is also quite scratched already (and not my daughter’s to begin with), I’d better make a backup copy. Oh wait, these brilliant pieces of software engineering were copy protected, making backups either impissible or a semi-criminal act. Who would expect CDs in kid’s hands to break, after all?!? And if it happens, well, there are replacement options after all, aren’t there? Like buying the whole bloody book again…

Hey, teachers, leave our kids alone (at least with fancy, unprofessional educational software that is technically about 20 years behind)… I’d rather have them use chalk, sticks and stones than these “modern” materials.

Sincerely,

A full-time IT analyst, educated with pen and paper (and a Commodore C128 in third grade)

P.S.: Net time investment: around 0.8 parent hours between my wife and me.

Kindle 3 web browsing via 3G in Spain

Note for the record: 3G web browsing works fine in Alicante with Kindle 3 UK edition. Absolutely not working with International/US version, though. I.e. the one I still have. :-(