If you got some with me at SQL in the City last week I London, or anytime in the last year, I’d love to have copies.
Pictures are memories for me, and I treasure all the ones I have of my kids. However I don’t have a ton from work, and I’d like to have a few more. Drop a note to sjones at SQLServerCentral with the image.
Thanks.
There are some amazing things that we accomplish with technology. For example, there is a system that can track a missile, moving at incredible speeds, and report this information to other applications that could potentially be used to react in some way. That’s pretty amazing, and whether or not you agree with the purpose of the system, the technical achievement is pretty incredible.
There are other people that can take that technology and apply it to a more benign use. SportVU has used missile tracking technology in sports to gather additional statistics on the various games and the players. They started using this with soccer, but have brought it to the US and the National Basketball Association, implementing the system in 10 arenas. The linked article looks at the way in which this technology can be applied to player performance, and uncovering patterns that might not be otherwise recognized.
It’s incredible to see the the heat maps of attempts v makes for one of the most exciting young shooters in the NBA. Watching his Kevin Durant in some games, I was sure that he could make any shot from anywhere on the floor. The data proves me wrong. If I were a defender, I’d be looking to force Durant outside of a few areas near the three point line and let him take his shots from elsewhere. At least until the data showed he was getting better from other spots.
So many of our decisions these days are based on hard data, but are we collecting the correct data? Could we find other data points that might uncover data within data? This article shows that there might be other technologies out there, even in completely unrelated fields, that might help us find new data points to capture, and new patterns that can help us make better decisions. If you are using any type of unusual technology in your business, let us know.
Steve Jones
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
I love to read. It’s one of my hobbies, and I usually go through 50-100 books a year, depending on the subject and the rest of my life. Usually I’m also keeping an eye on Paul Randal, who probably reads more pages than I do in a year, just less books. So far this year, I read 47 books through June 30, though 5 or 6 of those were re-reads from previous years. I have a page on GoodReads that notes a lot of what I read, but it’s not always completely up to date. I’m trying, but I read a lot.
I recently saw a list of geeky books for the summer. It’s a mix of fiction and nonfiction, science and technology, but all geeky type stuff. As I look through the list of 23 books, I found:
This year I’ll probably get to 100 books. With lots of travel planned, and lots of reading while I’m in the air, it shouldn’t be a problem. I highly encourage people to read, and constantly bug my kids to read more. It’s a good habit to get into, I think it improves your thinking and engagement with the world, it’s fun, and it’s a great habit to build. Both for your career and your life.
If you’ve got your own geeky recommendations, let us know.
Steve Jones
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
I ran across this article on time zones, and was surprised that it was such a complex topic. It seemed to me that there should be an easy conversion function built into SQL Server that would do this:
DECLARE @dt datetime SELECT @dt = GETDATE() SELECT CONVERT( DATETIMEOFFSET, @dt, 'CST')
and I’d get my current time in Central Standard Time (CST).
It’s 2012. We’ve learned that time zones are a part of applications. SQL Server is built for work with web applications, which usually span time zones. Developers can code around this, but don’t we want to give them tools to save time? Isn’t that the whole idea behind Lightswitch, ORMs, and most of the new languages in the world? To make developers more productive?
CONVERT still has crazy numeric codes for conversion. Wouldn’t it make more sense to do this:
DECLARE @dt datetime SELECT @dt = GETDATE() SELECT CONVERT( datetime, @dt, 'dd.mm.yy')
than this?
DECLARE @dt datetime SELECT @dt = GETDATE() SELECT CONVERT( datetime, @dt, 104)
Time zone abbreviations are well known. Shouldn’t they be built into SQL Server?
Sometimes I wonder if we are looking too much into things we can add to an application rather than the things that we can improve. Especially those things we use constantly.
Steve Jones
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
