I first met Tom Pellereau on his cousin's stag do. He helped me give the stag some traditional punishment while 500 ft up the TV tower in Tallinn during a memorable afternoon.

http://www.teletorn.ee/index.php?lang=eng

Tom contacted me recently to inform me that he has designed a new type of nail file.

http://www.stylfile.com

and in an effort to help him promote it I said I would buy 1 for every press up (with a clap at the top) he could complete within a minute. I based this offer on the fact that his cousin, Daniel Denham, is not threatening to challenge for the World's strongest man any time soon, so in theory I shouldn't have to shell out too much (Daniel's emaciated frame can be seen in the photo below)

http://www.danieldenham.f2s.com/bike/wheelie.jpg

but Tom has pulled it out of the bag

http://www.stylfile.com/gun_show.php

23 press ups - that's going to cost me!

I am attempting to update rows in a table - some of the parameters will be null and I need to update the row field to reflect that.

I assumed that (simplified SQL to demonstrate)

DECLARE @Bid DECIMAL(8,7)
DECLARE @Result INT

SELECT @Result = 0

SELECT @Result =
CASE @Bid
 WHEN NULL THEN 1
 ELSE 2
END

SELECT @Result

would give me a value of 1 if it follows the same logic as when testing with an INT (I am using the IS to compare rather than equals)

DECLARE @Bid DECIMAL(8,7)
DECLARE @Result INT

SELECT @Result = 0

SELECT @Bid = 4

SELECT @Result =
CASE @Bid
 WHEN 4 THEN 1
 ELSE 2
END

SELECT @Result

However, it doesn't, so I have to rewrite the SQL as

DECLARE @Bid DECIMAL(8,7)
DECLARE @Result INT

SELECT @Result = 0

SELECT @Result =
CASE
 WHEN @Bid IS NULL THEN 1
 ELSE 2
END

SELECT @Result

which works.

• Fly Virgin

Usually, at 6ft 3, I find travelling long distances in cattle class to be uncomfortable. However, Virgin's A340-600 have more than enough legroom, and on the return flight I managed to purchase an exit seat. The movies/music on demand service was excellent too.

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/allaboutus/ourfleet/index.jsp?type=7

• Visit table mountain

http://www.tablemountain.net/main/index.asp

We were too blase about the good weather one morning and decided to leave it until another day. Unfortunately it was too windy/cloudy for the remainder of our time in Capetown meaning that we didn't get the chance to go up

• Go on Safari

• Makanyane

Makanyane is a truly special place - note that South Africa charges two rates, one for tourists and one for locals.

http://www.makanyane.com/

http://travel.independent.co.uk/news_and_advice/article336876.ece

We used Tracy at South African Soujourns to blag the cheaper rate

http://africansojourns.com/

although you may be able to find a few offers by searching the web

http://www.makanyane.com/reservations_specialrates.php

http://www.tourismnorthwest.co.za/specials_files/makanyane_lodge.html

• Mabula

We then went to Mabula for a wedding. Less personal, but a lot cheaper. Same range of animals on Safari

http://www.mabula.com/

• Go wine tasting

There are several ways of doing this - we chose to hire bikes.

http://www.franschhoekwines.co.za/

Rickety bridge had really good wines

http://www.wine.co.za/directory/winery.aspx?PRODUCERID=3258e

and the biggest bottle of wine I have ever seen - a Primat. Yours for 18000 Rand (<£1800)

We wanted to go to Stoney Brook as we had enjoyed one of their wines the previous night, but they weren't open for tasting

http://www.wine-lovers-page.com/cgi-bin/quest/ga.cgi?q=49

• Sample steak

Belthazar - voted best steak house in South Africa

http://www.belthazar.co.za/

http://www.belthazar.co.za/award.s05.html

• Sample fine cuisine

This restaurant has received several awards but you could get a six course meal for only 300 Rand (<£30)

http://www.lequartier.co.za/cuisine/cuisine.htm

A while ago I linked to solving Sudoku with SQL

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,0bb39397-b60f-4448-8493-51f2c88f5443.aspx

Now Steven Toub at MS has come up with a Sudoku app written in .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/tabletpc/articles/techart/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dntablet/html/tbconsudokusamplefinal.asp

that runs on XP Tablet 2005 edition.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/default.mspx

Mine arrived yesterday - I will install 2003 R2 in the next couple of weeks

http://ts2blogs.com/blogs/nealw/archive/2006/04/05/1105.aspx

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40009848

http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~grant/Stuff/copperfield_illusion.pps

and how it is done

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_card_trick.htm

Note: It fooled at least one person in the office.

The sunrise period is over and it's now a free for all

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4888302.stm

I registered mine this morning

http://www.freeparking.co.uk/

I am registering some domains and had forgotten the ip address of my web server. I can't use tracert from my client's site, so this tool came in handy

http://www.zoneedit.com/lookup.html

After my Excel rounding problem

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,cb3f5ff0-3b1f-4569-bb91-34a2f0e09034.aspx

I came across a SQL rounding issue. I had been using ISNULL() in a stored proc

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/tsqlref/ts_ca-co_9dph.asp

and discovered that the numbers coming out weren't quite what I was expecting. After reading the above link, I assume that the second (decimal) argument in my ISNULL statement had its level of accuracy converted to the first. The solution was to use COALEASCE()

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/tsqlref/ts_ca-co_9dph.asp

To recreate problem:

DECLARE @Value DECIMAL(4,3)

SELECT @Value = 8.463

DECLARE @Arg1 DECIMAL (2,1)
DECLARE @Arg2 DECIMAL (5,4)

SELECT @Arg2 = 6.3863

SELECT @Value * @Arg2 --CORRECT
SELECT @Value * ISNULL(@Arg1, @Arg2)  --INCORRECT
SELECT 8.463 * 6.4 --INCORRECT
SELECT @Value * COALESCE(@Arg1, @Arg2) --CORRECT

I have commented on this previously

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,35888a0f-c06a-4e6c-a818-5d4871ed35b3.aspx

but came across a similar problem in Excel today. A trader is using the INT() function to remove decimal places. A number such as 23.59 will become 23. However, our solution (correctly I believe) interprets this as 24. It may be that the trader should've used ROUND().

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q196652/

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913090

The fixes seem to centre around the non-core functionality such as MDX/Analysis services. I last did MDX using ASP 2.0 several years ago

http://members.microsoft.com/CustomerEvidence/Search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=2346&LanguageID=1