Ross Goodman

Author: Ross Goodman

  • Fantastic MND Fundraising Night

    Last Friday Simon Corbett arranges a fantastic fundraising night for MND Scotland.
    DSC_9685
    Simon had arranged an excellent DJ to keep the evening entertained.
    A quizz to test our general knowledge.
    A raffle to make sure that lots of us had something to take home.
    There was an auction of a bottle of whisky, signed by the First minister; that went for £250.
    DSC_9682
    I’d like to thank Simon and his family and friends for organising the event, everyone who donated raffles and everyone who turned up of the night.
    Ross Goodman

  • Google Reader – Send To GMail

    I’m a huge fan of Google Reader.
    They recently introduced a “Send To” feature to allow you to share items with other users.
    The one that was not included by default was Send To GMail !

    Try This:
    https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=cm&cmid=0&fs=1&tearoff=1&to=&su=${title}&body=${url}
    Whoops, just noticed there is a big “EMail” button at the bottom of every article that does just this!

  • Fundraising – MND Scotland

    Great Scottish Run – Half Marathon 13.1 miles – 6th September
    Pedal For Scotland – Glasgow To Edinburgh Cycle 50 miles – 13th September

    Background

    On the 7th September my 17 year old daughter; Emma Berry Goodman died of Motor Neurone Disease.
    Previously I had promised her that I would run a marathon before I was 40. I have just under a year to ensure that I do that.
    The only experience I have of running was doing a 10k for MND in 2008 so the half marathon is the next logical progression.
    Never one to do things by half I have also signed up for a 50mile cycle ride as a “cool down” event after the run.
    If you have never heard of Motor Neurone Disease have a look at their website http://www.mndscotland.org.uk/ I would pay particular attention to the video. The film has been given a cert 15 classification. It is a graphic portrait of how many people diagnosed and living with this illness can feel.
    In addition to making a donation here, it would be fantastic if you could either join me on either or both events or if you could come along on the day and cheer me on!

    Thanks

    Ross Goodman

  • July – Keep Fit – Update

    Just to show that I have been doing “some” prep work for my up and coming fund-raising events:

    Running

    Runs : 4
    Distance : 8.81 miles
    Time : 01:40
    Avg Speed : 5.3 mph

    Cycling

    Cycles : 4
    Distance : 15.82 miles
    Time : 02:32
    Avg Speed : 6.2 mph

    Summary

    Must Try Harder.
    Concerned by the verl low average speed of the cycling !
    August WILL be better!

  • Gardening Update

    Where The Rainbow Starts
    Creative Commons License photo credit: Kuzeytac (OUT, till 20.08.09-see profile)
    I’ve been neglecting my garden recently, the grass is being cut but that’s just about it.
    Everything is growing but not as well as I wanted.
    (more…)

  • Back To Blogging – Shortly

    Moo cards for blogging workshop
    Creative Commons License photo credit: Mexicanwave
    I have ben spending far too much time on Twitter and not enough time blogging.
    This will be changing shortly.
    I’m planning a redesign of the site.
    First steps are I’ve cleared out all of the subscribers to my site and left only the people I have physically met. If I have deleted you by accident, I apologise.
    If you would like to have an account e-mail or tweet me and I’ll create one for you.

    More soon !

  • Oracle Datatype Conversions

    Last week I gave a colleague a demonstration on why, if you have numbers stored in a character string you should convert them explicitly to numbers:

    select ‘Yes’
    from dual
    where ‘1000’ between ‘000’ and ‘999’;

    ‘YES’
    —–
    Yes

  • The Great Gardening Project

    DSCN0399

    Whilst nowhere near as ambitious as J.D. and Kris’ project here I have decided to do some work in the garden this year. I’m a few weeks behind writing up my progress so I’ll try and summarise after the break.

    (more…)

  • Tell Me When The DB Is Back

    database 2
    Creative Commons License photo credit: Tim Morgan
    Today at work the development DB went down.
    My days of fixing databases are long gone, but the guys that are are not so good at letting everyone know that the database is back up.
    I created this windows batch script to let me know.
    (more…)

  • Blogging Whilst Employed – Beware!

    october05.0103
    Creative Commons License photo credit: eshm
    I was having a flick through my employment contract and I found the following clause:

    13.2
    You agree that during the course of this contract and after the termination of the contract for whatever reason without limit in point in time you will keep in confidence and shall not disclose to any person unless authorised to do so with the prior written consent of the Company the following:-
    13.2.1 Any consultancy know-how, methods, tools, techniques or intellectual capital.

    I realised that some of my blog entries or tweets could fall foul of this clause so I asked for written permission to continue blogging generic “work related” content such as Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Modelling and Business Objects.
    Rather than granting this and leveraging the fairly good google rankings that my posts seem to get I was asked to remove all work related posts.
    Business Objects Best Practice (higher ranking than BusinessObjects.com)
    Business Objects New Features (Page One)
    Dimensional Modelling (Ralph Kimball ?)
    As such I have password protected all of my work related posts.
    If you are struggling to find content there are a variety of searches that could turn up interesting content.
    Alternatively you can go to my company site, contact details can be found here or here.