Google Zeitgeist '05

Google have released the 2005 Zeitgeist which gives us a nice overview of the year we have just endured.

2005 Zeitgeist

Weird requests ...

After reading Steve Jone's latest post "Anyone want to handle this?" with some amusement, I thought I'd share this gem received via my companies Contact Us page. Bear in mind that as our home page declares, "Bell Potter is an Australian-owned stockbroker and financial services provider."

Enjoy!

Bell Potter Website Feedback
____________________________
Name: EVA
Email: me3242@globaldial.com
Telephone: 08 9 399 5153
Adviser:
Location: Western Australia
Enquiry Type: General

Message:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
PLEASE CAN YOU HELP ME
I LOOKING FOR SMALL MILKING MACHINE, I HAVE 3 GOATS, AND MY ARTHRITIS GAVE ME HARD TIME WHEN I MILKING MY GOATS AND I WISH TO BAY MILKING MACHINE. DU YOU SELL THIS KIND MACHINE. OR MAYBE YOU KNOW WHERE I CAN FIND.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH

KIND REGARDS
EVA FEZER

User Defined Functions vs Inbuilt/SQL formulas

Interesting, and at times passionate, discussion on the relative merits of using UDF's in SQL Server 2000. Catch the main thread here.

Would be even more interesting to throw SQL Server 2005 CLR functions in there as well.

RE: Reporting Service article

Roman Rehak let's us know about his latest article.

My latest article called Programming Report Rendering in Reporting Services is in the latest issue of SQL Server Magazine. Since it's in the current issue, you don't have to be a subscriber to read it. It should be pretty useful for you if you need to call the SOAP API to generate reports from custom applications.

[Via SQLJunkies Blogs]

Diplomacy the game

I've started playing a PBEM version of Diplomacy. Been many years since I played the board game. I re-discovered it via the Diplomatic Pouch website. For those that are intrested how it works, basically emails are sent to 'Judge' programs that receive the email and process the information based on a pre-set series of commands.

eg: to send a message to all players

signon <power><game name> <password>
 broadcast
 <your message text>
 endpress
 signoff

As Austria I start with two armies and a navy and it'll be interesting to see how I go. The map is available here