The following is a pretty nice expression evaluator for Oracle’s PL/SQL language. You pass it a string containing an expression that would return a numeric value when evaluated and it will evaluate the entire expression and return the number. The passed expression must be in valid Oracle syntax or you will get a NULL instead of a number. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 CREATE FUNCTION expression (iExpression IN varchar2) RETURN number AS vResult number; BEGIN ----------------------------------------------------------- -- Expression evaluator for PL/SQL.

The recent revelations about the inhuman brutality and abuse heaped on innocent children by the so called Sisters Of Mercy and/or the Christian Brothers over 60 odd years in Ireland is an abomination. Summary of the report Reactions But what is worse is the fact that before the report came out damning the Catholic Church for covering up and/or ignoring the abuse (physical, mental and sexual) a couple of things happened.

MP’s expense claims seem to be causing all sorts of trouble at the moment. It’s extremely funny how The Daily Mail suddenly went all quiet on the subject after it was discovered that the Tories had been just as dishonest as Labour. Funny that. I work for a living and if I get a job in London and have to live there, I can claim a limited amount of my overall expense back.

Driving to work this morning when I hit the Kirkstall Road area where a perfectly good dual carriageway has been split into a bus (and cyclist) lane only and a lane for the rest of us. at the end of this section of the road, there is a set of traffic lights that only affect the non-bus (and cyclist) lane. The purpose of these lights is to stop the normal people from getting to work on time, while allowing those on a bus the ability to get about 20 yards further up the road than they would normally if there were no lights there.

Alison and I went to Harrogate on Saturday and spent the day building a couple of beehives. Alison hasn’t done any form of wood workery before and she did a really good job of putting her hive together, although her hammering technique was a tad amusing, but then again, as she’s never had to use a hammer before why should she know? Me? Well, I’m a professional (mechanic and DBA) and I managed to get a bit of mine glued and nailed into the wrong location and, I think, upside down as well!

On the QL we have traditionally had a 36 character limit on file names after the initial (5 character) device name. Something like this: flp1_source_code_myfile_c In the above, flp1_ is the device name and is not included in the 36 character limit. There can be a network device tagged on the front as well, and this too is not included in the filename limit. Technically, in the above, source and code are both directories (the default directory separator is the underscore character) while myfile_c is the filename and extension.

As mentioned previously on this blog, we have had a large number of breeding frogs in our pond.Well the tadpoles have hatched and are growing well. At least, the ones that manage to stay well hidden are. :-( Those damned Koi are eating machines and there is wholesale slaughter going on in the pond at the moment. The volume of tadpoles is dwindling quite rapidly as those fat, greedy bastards (have I mentioned that I don’t like them?

Walking through Leeds today, traffic doing its thing as usual. Then, in the distance, it could be heard………. thump thump thump getting louder and louder and louder. Soon, it appeared, yet another bloody moron in a beat up old Corsa (or similar) with a dustbin exhaust - take note, that changes the engine’s breathing and will stuff your engine a lot quicker than you think. Intake and exhaust are balanced for best results by professional engineers, and you are not one of those.

As I came into work this morning (21st April 2009) I was listening to the man from the Driving Test ‘agency’ on Radio 4. The person was asked about the proposals for adding a new section to the test where the examiner gives the trainee driver a set of instructions similar to directions obtained from a passer by, and whether a trainee would be failed for getting the instructions wrong.

I was shouting at a nun on TV the other night. The silly woman had [thankfully] survived the Italian earthquake and in retelling her story she said words along the lines of “I woke up when the quake started and the walls began to fall down. I got up and rushed outside. I only escaped because of god.” Does the woman not realise that it was her ‘god’ who was responsible for the damned earthquake in the first place?

Well, the frogs have almost gone. After a mass orgy of croaking all night and day (do they ever sleep?) and sex all day and night (lucky b*ggers!) they have started leaving. The pond is returning to the domain of the Koi carp (which I hate almost as much as I hate cats) and is full of spawn. This morning there were only about a dozen frogs left, a couple still paired up, but most of the rest had gone.

Coming home from our bee keeping course on Tuesday night (10th March 2009) Alison and I spotted a ghostly shape on the grass verge in the dark. Turns out to have been a live badger. We stopped (yes, it was safe to stop!) and it wandered away a few yards, paused and watched us watching it. We remained thus for about 10 seconds until it lost interest in us and wandered off into a field.

Just like last year, the mass orgy of frog sex is taking place on Alison’s birthday! We have more mating frogs that you can shake a stick at in the pond right now. Most are spawning - as they do - some already have. It’s interesting to see how the males lose interest in the females once sex has been had! One problem I have this year, lots of the frogs are getting up the pump outlet pipe and into the filtration system.