Ross Goodman

Blog

  • MND Scotland

    MND Scotland
    As of today the “Scottish Motor Neurone Disease Association” have rebranded to become “MND Scotland”.
    Their new web site can be found here.

    New Identity for the Scottish Motor Neurone Disease Association
    The new name and logo reflect the organisation’s values by putting those affected by Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in Scotland first. The logo contains a blue ‘Cornflower’ icon that is easily recognisable and was chosen as it signifies hope for the future. The Cornflower is a hardy, wild flower native to Scotland and countries where it survives in the most challenging environments. The Cornflower reflects the resilience of people affected by MND – as they face up to the challenges of life.

  • New Year – New Fitness Regime

    No New Years Resolutions, just a revisiting of the fitness regime I started last year.
    It’s late so just a quick update.
    I have started week 1 of both One Hundred PushUps and Two Hundred SitUps.
    I have also had my first jog in over four months. I went back to my patented “lamp-post method”: jog for one lamp-post, walk for one. I managed to complete a mile in 20 minutes. I have suddenly remembered how much I love being out in the middle of the night. Watching a fox hunt in the field beside the road before I start.
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  • A Year In Retrospect

    Just a quick summary of my on-line presence this year.

    Twitter

    I have invested a lot of content to Twitter this year.
    This is primarily due to the convenience of the platform racking up almost 1200 updates in the year here.

    Flickr / Photography

    I can’t find a way to get stats for the year so here are my top five photos:
    tennis
    Car Crash Rescue 1
    Lightning 5
    Kelvingrove Heads 1
    Car Crash Rescue 2

    Web Site / Blog

    By far the most popular post on the site was the photos page here.
    Second most popular page is the “About Me” page here.
    As for the blog entries themselves they rank at:
    1 – Business Objects XI 3.0 New Features – Conditional Prompts
    2 – Crystal Xcelsius – Filtered Rows From A Filter Component
    3 – Modelling Change In Your Dimensions
    4 – Business Objects XI 3.0 New Features – Change Data Tracking
    5 – Dimensional Modelling – Facts
    As you can see here the site only really started getting traffic last January so that gives me 17300 page views.
    sitestats

    Personal Stuff

    Obviously the biggest news of the year was the passing of my daughter Emma.
    Celebrating the Life of Emma Berry Goodman
    And the year ends on another low point with the passing of another member of my extended family.
    George Miller – Footballer | 1939 – 2008

  • WordPress 2.7 Upgrade Woes

    As usual the WordPress upgrade was a flawless experience. It ran with no errors.
    I’d love to say that my site is working perfectly, but it’s not.
    I have this weird error where the visual editor does not work.
    If I click on the “Visual” button, then the text editing box shrinks down until you cannot see it.
    Click the HTML button, the same thing happens.
    The only thing that I can get to work is; from the user settings, disable visual editing, then the HTML editor works as expected.

    History

    I used the wp-upgrade addin to automatically upgrade, no errors, but no visual editing.
    I then did a fresh install, on the same host, using the same database, just with a different table prefix. Everything worked fine.
    I then backed up all of my files, deleted the old site, copied the new one in it’s place. I then copied the relevant folders back from my old site, wp-content.
    Same result, no visual editor.

  • Restaurant Review – Thai Lemongrass – Glasgow

    This was the last thing I imagined i would write about when I set up this site but….

    Elaine and I were out shopping in Glasgow last weekend and decided to treat ourselves to a nice meal out. We were walking past the Thai Lemon Grass and thought we would give it a go.

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  • Security – TrueCrypt – Encrypt Your Files

    I was recently asked by a customer what steps we take to secure their files. I always use TrueCrypt to encrypt all customer files. This is an overview of how you can use TrueCrypt.

    TrueCrypt gives you the ability to store information in a hidden partition that is secure from prying eyes.
    Just as importantly the software is easy to use, being almost seamless in use.
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  • Oracle Design Tool – SQL Developer Data Modelling

    On my most recent project I am again designing another data warehouse solution.

    My tool of choice for data modelling has always been CA’s ERwin DataModeler http://www.ca.com/us/products/product.aspx?ID=260

    This is great, but we run into problems when trying to reverse engineer an existing database as this means that either my laptop has to go onto the customers network; that’s never going to happen. or the customer has to buy a copy of ERWin to use on their desktop.
    My most recent customer is a dedicated Oracle customer using Database, Data Guard, RAC, Forms, OBIEE, Answers and on and on.

    The obvious choice would be Oracle Designer. I have not used this in a few years but the last time it took me two days to get it installed and configured.

    A quick search pointed me to an early adopters release of SQL Developer Data Modelling, you can find it here : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/files/releasenotes525.htm
    Here are a few of my thoughts:

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  • The luddite is leaving the building !

    Despite my working in IT and also “enjoying” technology, our kids being typical kids and having a PC each and an unstoppable curiosity, Elaine has never shared our passion.

    Last week Elaine tore the ligaments in her left foot so has not been able to hit the shops at all and has been forced to stay at home with her feet  up. Over the space of that week she did her first Asda shop online.

    Last night, with no prompting Elaine had the laptop out and was shopping unaided !

    The coup de grace was the next question:

    How to I get the BBC iPlayer on the Wii to work again !

  • 100 Pushups – 6 Weeks To Christmas !

    It’s funny how your mind works, someone told me today that there were only six weeks until Christmas and my initial thought was of the six week challenge to do 100 consecutive pushups !

    One Hundred Pushups
    One Hundred Pushups

    I faltered previously at week fix then subsequent events have meant that I have not been in the mindset for restarting this.

    Tonight I went back and restarted at week 3, level 2 …… and failed.

  • My Latest Toy

    I treated myself to a new toy for my camera.

    DSCN0239

    Cactus Wireless Triggers

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