Andrew's Stuff

This is now the second time that I'm writing this as the flat mains power sockets only, it seems, have died. The oven and lights seem to be working still. That'll teach me not to save stuff regularly and/or stop writing stuff on my desktop via RDC.

Anyway, I'll try to remember what I had typed previously.

I learnt something new today in my Information Resource Engineering tutorial. I learnt just how much Microsoft Access totally sucks when you try to do anything remotely advanced with SQL in it. Want to ALTER more than one property of a table in one query? No chance! Want to INSERT more than one row of data in the one query? Not a hope in hell! It amazes me that it supports more complex features such as primary/foreign key constraints (more on those later) while being entirely ignorant of simple things such as the aforementioned extended queries. I started doubting my own SQL experience and considering the possibility that maybe the features of SQL that I'm so used to using were somehow MySQL-only features; MySQL is the only database application that I've used, after all. Luckily my lecturer came to the rescue, though, and confirmed that these were merely Access being a pain in the rear end and that these features exist in industry standard database packages such as Oracle as well as MySQL. How anyone can do anything in Access is beyond me. It's like a lot of Microsoft's attempts at stuff - Internet Explorer, for example - half-hearted and overall totally crap.

I mentioned in the above paragraph that I would touch on primary/foreign key constraints. That's a totally new database feature to me as MySQL has only VERY recently started supporting them in version 5. You can tell that it's recent because the MySQL website is currently going over the top about the release of version MySQL 5. From what I can tell primary/foreign key constraints exist solely to enforce (constrain) primary/foreign key relationships. Previously I've been enforcing this with my own PHP scripts but now I can have the database package itself enforce it as well. I don't really see how this offers me any benefits over enforcing it in PHP; all it seems to do is piss me off immensely when I end up having to add data in bizarre orders >.>

Natalie and Yana have just got back from Accommodation Lodge telling them that our electricity is off and apparently it's entirely our fault. "Someone's been using something they shouldn't have been". Err yeah right, dudes... It was "the mean old guy" anyway, so quite possibly the same guy that insisted that my £80 access point wasn't there. Bastard. That's the reason why I refused to order my Xbox 360 to be delivered to halls but have got it sent to Peter's instead. There is no way in hell that I am going to trust the overall pretty incompetant people in Accommodation Lodge with £400 of my stuff. "What? We never received an Xbox 360!" Oh yeah, I ordered that the other day in case you hadn't guessed. Full console package (i.e. Wireless controller, 20GB hard drive, remote control, etc.), plus a second wireless controller, two Play & Charge kits (so I can continue playing games while charging the controller batteries), a VGA adapter (for high-definition prettiness on 19" TFT) and Perfect Dark Zero. I've spied (thanks to Ben) a Halo triple pack containing Halo, Halo 2 and the Halo 2 multiplayer map pack for barely any more than Halo 2 on its own, so I'll order that in a few weeks' time. I don't need that until the console itself arrives anyway and that'll most likely not be here until early next year. Amazon are still insisting that they'll dispatch it for delivery on the 2nd-3rd of December but I don't believe that for a second, knowing Microsoft's total inability to build enough consoles in time. To paraphrase a quote of theirs I read on the BBC news website: "There's a reason that no one else [Nintendo, Sony and, to a lesser extent, Sega] has done this [released a console in the USA, the UK and Japan within about two weeks] before; we're realising that now."

... and whilst I was eating the electrician-type dude appeared and switched our power back on. Hooray.