Caves of Steel

Caves of Steel is interesting because it is a murder mystery set in the future, which at the time this book was written was a novel concept. It also presents an interesting almost-communist view of the future, where individual liberties are surrendered one by one in order to improve economic efficiency in order to support Earth's ever growing population. Implicit in that is the assertion that capitalism is inherently inefficient, but I'll leave that discussion alone.

This book is a really quick read. It took me a day (including actually going to work) to knock it over, which was fun. The book is a good, light read.

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Syndicated 2008-05-14 10:00:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Blathering for Tuesday, 13 May 2008

15:05: The new Qantas A380s have the worlds worst color in economy class: pictures


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Syndicated 2008-05-14 08:05:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Discovering the CASE statement

In an effort to speed up my database updates, I've been looking for ways to batch some of my updates. CASE seems like the way to go:

mysql> create table bar(a tinyint, b tinyint);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> insert into bar(a) values(1), (2), (3), (4), (5);
Query OK, 5 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 5  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

mysql> select * from bar;
+------+------+
| a    | b    |
+------+------+
|    1 | NULL | 
|    2 | NULL | 
|    3 | NULL | 
|    4 | NULL | 
|    5 | NULL | 
+------+------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> update bar set b = case a
    ->   when 1 then 42
    ->   when 2 then 43
    ->   when 3 then 44
    ->   else 45
    ->   end;
Query OK, 5 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 5  Changed: 5  Warnings: 0

mysql> select * from bar;
+------+------+
| a    | b    |
+------+------+
|    1 |   42 | 
|    2 |   43 | 
|    3 |   44 | 
|    4 |   45 | 
|    5 |   45 | 
+------+------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

I see stuff online which warns not to forget the else, otherwise you get a default of null, so I guess I should bear that caveat in mind...

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Syndicated 2008-05-12 14:11:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

I, Robot

The 1950s must have been a great time to be a science fiction author. WW2 was finally over, and seemingly massively stupid ideas like mutually assured destruction, nuclear rifles so powerful that they were as much a danger to those firing them as those who were on the receiving end, and Brylcreem were all the rage. Into this atmosphere of run away idiocy comes Asimov's I, Robot, the book which defined the three laws of robotics, and some how managed to not suggest that humanity should nuke each other all into submission. This book is still an excellent read almost 60 years later, and I think still shows us some of the future. Its a little depressing to think how little we've achieved towards Asimov's proposed future world, given the time line laid out in this book.

One of the interesting aspects of this book is Asimov's failure to predict things which seem so mundane now, but must have not been obvious to an observer in 1950. For example:

• The commonness of computers now. One of the short stories revolves around a secret batch of robots, and the need to debug them. The protagonists can't use a computer though, because that would draw too much attention. Why not use a laptop? Because Asimov failed to predict them.
• The use of wire recorders to record sound. No optical media (or whatever we'll have in the future) here.
• The assumption that robots contain vacuum tubes.
• The failure to account for inflation. This one should have been obvious! A batch of 63 robots for instance is valued at $2 million dollars in one of the stories, a sum so great that no one can conceive of deliberately destroying the batch.

A good book.

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Syndicated 2008-05-12 05:32:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

The Stainless Steel Rat Series

I am increasingly becoming obsessed with science fiction from 1950s and 1960s. Again stolen from Wikipedia, here is a list of all the Stainless Steel Rat books:

Year	Title	Notes
1985	A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born	I got this one from powell's
1987	The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted
1994	The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues
1961	The Stainless Steel Rat
1970	The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge
1972	The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World
1978	The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You	I got this one from bookbuyers
1982	The Stainless Steel Rat for President	I got this one from bookbuyers
1996	The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell	I got this one from bookbuyers
1999	The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus
1993	The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat

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Syndicated 2008-05-12 03:19:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley