04 May 2005
Just an observation, no need to grill me over a seemingly obvious statement. I reserve the proceeding space for musings not guaranteed to be of interest to any other individual on the planet.
Finished Ondaatje’s “In The Skin of a Lion” this afternoon, some time between a catalyst and an idea forming unconsciously whilst reading, and leaping out once it was finished into nothing because I didn’t have time to write (I was on a bus), so I spoke into the air (I walk along a fairly quiet route home)… it said nothing back.
Then, a few hours later, I tried to write it again. It happened, it’s working, albeit somewhat differently to that first elocution and my subsequent expectations of how it would work out — because it’s taken on the voice of Ondaatje! I can’t escape that quasi-poetic/prose mix he spurts forth nearly endlessly! The sentences are fragmented, and it doesn’t feel natural — the voice is not my own. It’s not his, but mine is so affected meaning is lost in translation.
It’s like drink driving. Intoxication on the creation of others leading to accidents. Disasters. The disaster of inadvertant emulation.
03 May 2005
A certain Mrs. Wendy Christie, on expressing dissonant views towards ‘canon of literature’ texts:
At PhD level you will be asked for your own opinion. Don’t do it before that.
Welcome to New South Wales, Australia mandated curriculum: Stifling creativity, freedom of expression, and independent thought since some time in the late twentieth century.
03 May 2005
Coming May 12.
03 May 2005
I just discovered that MySQL has a mathematical function called RAND(). It serves two purposes, one of which was relevant to me, the other is just nifty to know.
You can use RAND() as a random number generator (although it’s probably not terribly random) simply by using the syntax
SELECT RAND();
or with a seed value between the parentheses
SELECT RAND(1234);
or (and this is the cool one for me) like this
SELECT * FROM tbl_name ORDER BY RAND();
to retrieve results in a random order.
Nifty, hey?
More info can be found on the MySQL Reference Manual Mathematical Functions page
01 May 2005
This month past has regrettably been one in which I haven’t spent enough time creating content, although March was fairly good, but the traffic didn’t really falter for it.
Unique: 2091
Visits: 4281
Pages: 14158
Hits: 44419
Bandwidth: 484.76 MB
Unique impressions are up by over 600 from last month, suggesting increased driven traffic (from external sites, search engines, etc., which accounted for 13.1% of total traffic, as opposed to incidental traffic – that is, regular visitors, syndication, etc.). Bandwidth is slightly up on March, exceeding 500MB if non-viewed statistics are included (there was 192.48 MB of non-viewed traffic, which means search engine spidering as well as certain syndication services I think), which is getting fairly sizeable I think, especially compared to last year’s statistics for this month (which aren’t really valid, because there was a holder page up then, but it’s fun to point out) — 2.38MB of traffic and 30 unique visitors!
The most popular post on this website remains the original DashLite announcement, although the updated version doesn’t really get a look in… which is okay, because it was released more out of social responsibility than any new need, and people can choose for themselves what they want.
See also:
February 2005 statistics
September/October 2004 statistics
June 2004 statistics