DP Ameristar is proud to announce its new newest venture catering financial education and services at non-professional investors.
Introducing DP Ameribro. Our advanced search tools allow commonly misused term like “what’s up with my shit?” into searches for past, present and projected future earnings on your portfolio.
Fed up with complicated ratios and statistics? Our proprietary rating of bro points takes the suck out of success! Equities are easily rated on a three point scale of “WTF” to “Meh” to “Fuckin’ Sweet”. Additionally, we have partnered with some of the largest financial services companies to define “bro-specific” sectors and industries including Workout Accessories, High Proof Alcohol Products , Kanye West Related Consumer Items and Ringtones.
Live like a bro, Trade like a pro.
DP Ameristar
Hoboken, FL
All rights reserved.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Insert song title here.
I wonder if I may lie.
breathe slowly
open your eyes
can you hear me
and end this journey
what do you see?
were we ever really alive?
Lets switch off together
lets float to no more
goodbye...
goodbye to everything.
To slip the surly bonds of flesh and bone
expand through endless and infinite time
sallow pain and grounding,
bindings to nothing
This adorned box from Pandora,
Fastened around the neck of the willing and unwilling alike
Move, fall, slip away from this
push forever and make no difference
sleep, dream, fly, float, wake, die.
tears, blood, hate, rage, cry.
I turn an eye inward and expand forever more
I look outside and waste away
pathetic, useless, physical existence
when a journey awaits would the guards but leave.
Where does this lead? when does this leave?
Why must I breathe? Why must I grieve?
Does anyone really believe that this is how it should be?
breathe slowly
open your eyes
can you hear me
and end this journey
what do you see?
were we ever really alive?
Lets switch off together
lets float to no more
goodbye...
goodbye to everything.
To slip the surly bonds of flesh and bone
expand through endless and infinite time
sallow pain and grounding,
bindings to nothing
This adorned box from Pandora,
Fastened around the neck of the willing and unwilling alike
Move, fall, slip away from this
push forever and make no difference
sleep, dream, fly, float, wake, die.
tears, blood, hate, rage, cry.
I turn an eye inward and expand forever more
I look outside and waste away
pathetic, useless, physical existence
when a journey awaits would the guards but leave.
Where does this lead? when does this leave?
Why must I breathe? Why must I grieve?
Does anyone really believe that this is how it should be?
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
SQL Server Templates
SQL Server Management Studio comes with a bunch of pre-built templates for scripting out procedures, functions, tables, administrative functions and more. All they are essentially are a .sql file with some special syntax in the script where values can be pasted into place. The special syntax is pretty easy to get a handle on, but at first glance can seem a little strange. Here's a sample of what you might see if you were looking at a SQL Server template (minus all the red lines I added).
There are several parts to this. Let's start with the window that's currently being displayed (in the picture, it's the window with the header "Specify Values for Template Parameters"). To get to this window, you must have a query window open in SSMS, and it wouldn't hurt to have a few tags in it (more on that later). In this query window, press ctrl+shift+M. I have no idea what the M is a mnemonic for... para(M)eters? Whatever. Once you're in this view, you'll be able to replace the special notation inside the script with values you input on this screen.
So how do you set that up? You put in tags with the notation
[Parameter] is like the identifier for your replacements. Anywhere in your script, any time you have, say
[Type] is really just a hint to yourself about what datatype the script is expecting. Often times it's irellevant. If you're building a new Proc, you might have a tag which says
[Value] is an optional default value in the field. In the example I showed above, more often than not, I'm looking for information_schema.columns, so I set the default of Parameter:SubType to "Columns". If i wanted to make it Routines or Tables, I just have to replace the "Columns" value with the value I want.
When you then click OK, all the values you have are propagated into those replaced tags throughout your script. It's worth mentioning that SQL treats each replacement of a value as a single undoable action, so if you've got a huge parameter list and you accidentally hit OK too soon, all the values you did (or probably didn't) submit will have to be undone one by one till you get back to your original script.
My final note on this is that if you don't have SQL 2012, or do and cant figure out how to use the snippets feature, get something like the SSMS Toolspack. It's free, and comes with a bunch of helpful tools, my favorite of which is a really simple code snippet interface. I've built little 2 - 3 character shortcuts for some of my most commonly used functions, such as the one I listed here. I type "info"+tab and it populate my query window with that code. I've got others as well, "tab"+tab for tables, "IX" for indexes and so on. When you combine this template format with the ability to call these templates up in a fraction of a second, you can really cut down extra typing time a LOT.
There are several parts to this. Let's start with the window that's currently being displayed (in the picture, it's the window with the header "Specify Values for Template Parameters"). To get to this window, you must have a query window open in SSMS, and it wouldn't hurt to have a few tags in it (more on that later). In this query window, press ctrl+shift+M. I have no idea what the M is a mnemonic for... para(M)eters? Whatever. Once you're in this view, you'll be able to replace the special notation inside the script with values you input on this screen.
So how do you set that up? You put in tags with the notation
<[Parameter], [Type], [Value]>[Parameter] is like the identifier for your replacements. Anywhere in your script, any time you have, say
tagged in the script, all instances of that Database tag, will be replaced with the value you put in that popup window. This is the only part of the tag which is NOT optional. Think of it as your primary key.[Type] is really just a hint to yourself about what datatype the script is expecting. Often times it's irellevant. If you're building a new Proc, you might have a tag which says
[Value] is an optional default value in the field. In the example I showed above, more often than not, I'm looking for information_schema.columns, so I set the default of Parameter:SubType to "Columns". If i wanted to make it Routines or Tables, I just have to replace the "Columns" value with the value I want.
When you then click OK, all the values you have are propagated into those replaced tags throughout your script. It's worth mentioning that SQL treats each replacement of a value as a single undoable action, so if you've got a huge parameter list and you accidentally hit OK too soon, all the values you did (or probably didn't) submit will have to be undone one by one till you get back to your original script.
My final note on this is that if you don't have SQL 2012, or do and cant figure out how to use the snippets feature, get something like the SSMS Toolspack. It's free, and comes with a bunch of helpful tools, my favorite of which is a really simple code snippet interface. I've built little 2 - 3 character shortcuts for some of my most commonly used functions, such as the one I listed here. I type "info"+tab and it populate my query window with that code. I've got others as well, "tab"+tab for tables, "IX" for indexes and so on. When you combine this template format with the ability to call these templates up in a fraction of a second, you can really cut down extra typing time a LOT.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Evolutionary Causes of Depression
I read an interesting article hypothesizing an evolutionary cause for depression which stated that depression is a state people get in which is conducive to intent thinking and personal change. There's more to it than that and I suggest you read the article in full because it's quite good.
Having been depressed off and on for quite some time, i'd say that theory is imperfect, but as with all theories of psychology, they're applicable only to a generalized description of the disorder, so it still may hold water.
I was thinking about evolutionary causes for depression, and while I preface this with the giant asterisk of "since you can't really prove something like this, it could be just about anything", I still think it's interesting, if not morbid.
What if depression is a state of mind evolved to sort of say "shit or get off the pot"? Being depressed certainly brings about different patterns of behavior. Some are so painful and disparaging that the only way out is through a cathartic change of lifestyle. Some people simply fluctuate out of depressive states, some people change their lives to get out of depressive states, some people never leave their depressive states, and more often than not, those who cannot or do not ever leave their depressive states, take their own lives.
Could it be that depression is a means of either forcing people to improve their live or remove themselves from the gene pool? Again, this is a pretty morbid though, but while it's difficult to come up with true comparisons to a human psyche, there is plenty of self terminating behavior in computing. Competing threads may be automatically terminated if they are in a deadlock. anti-virus software isolates, quarantines, and destroys malignant software. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that humans have evolved their own sinister way of weeding out the unproductive.
Again, this is a generalized statement too, and i'll remind you, based on nothing but introspective experiences. There are a plethora of psychological ailments which probably have nothing to do with a normally functioning brain. True chemical imbalances like those brought on by under active endocrine systems, genetic defects such as trisomies, and brain damage from traumatic events are certainly not something evolution has chosen for. But within the realm of Major Depression discussed in this article, I think this is a interesting thought.
(Article):http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary
Having been depressed off and on for quite some time, i'd say that theory is imperfect, but as with all theories of psychology, they're applicable only to a generalized description of the disorder, so it still may hold water.
I was thinking about evolutionary causes for depression, and while I preface this with the giant asterisk of "since you can't really prove something like this, it could be just about anything", I still think it's interesting, if not morbid.
What if depression is a state of mind evolved to sort of say "shit or get off the pot"? Being depressed certainly brings about different patterns of behavior. Some are so painful and disparaging that the only way out is through a cathartic change of lifestyle. Some people simply fluctuate out of depressive states, some people change their lives to get out of depressive states, some people never leave their depressive states, and more often than not, those who cannot or do not ever leave their depressive states, take their own lives.
Could it be that depression is a means of either forcing people to improve their live or remove themselves from the gene pool? Again, this is a pretty morbid though, but while it's difficult to come up with true comparisons to a human psyche, there is plenty of self terminating behavior in computing. Competing threads may be automatically terminated if they are in a deadlock. anti-virus software isolates, quarantines, and destroys malignant software. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that humans have evolved their own sinister way of weeding out the unproductive.
Again, this is a generalized statement too, and i'll remind you, based on nothing but introspective experiences. There are a plethora of psychological ailments which probably have nothing to do with a normally functioning brain. True chemical imbalances like those brought on by under active endocrine systems, genetic defects such as trisomies, and brain damage from traumatic events are certainly not something evolution has chosen for. But within the realm of Major Depression discussed in this article, I think this is a interesting thought.
(Article):http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary
Bing v Google
Microsoft is focusing a lot of effort on web and cloud based technologies, trying to diverge from their existing model of software installed on local PC's. This is a laudable goal, and is probably imperative given the way things are going. I'm actually a big fan of Microsoft's product, much to the affront of Open Source fanboys around the world, but that's just the way it is. I write in TSQL (SQL Server's dialect of SQL), I dabble in C#, I run Windows, and more.
Now unless you've been living under a rock or the oppressive heel of a World of Warcraft subscription, you've probably seen Microsoft's ads for IE9, Windows 8, and of course Bing.
Bing.
If you haven't yet, I'd go take the "bing it on challenge" to get more of an idea of what I'm talking about. Plus then I don't have to explain how it works. I'd also recommend reading Microsoft's explanation of the study.
The key findings of the study were the following:
"When the results were tallied, the outcome was clear – people chose Bing web search results over Google nearly 2:1 in the blind comparison tests. Specifically, of the nearly 1000 participants: 57.4% chose Bing more often, 30.2% chose Google more often; 12.4 % resulted in a draw.*
*The overall sampling error rate for the study is +/- 3 percent at the 95 percent confidence level."
As they say, the outcome is clear... ish. Ignoring the "draw" votes Bing won. There are certainly flaws in the study, but given that everyone on earth knows what google looks like, there are limitations to how the studies can be performed.
select 57.4 / 30.2 --1.9:1 select 54.4 / 33.2 --1.6:1 select 60.4 / 27.2 --2.2:1
But not to sound cynical, but who cares? There are more reasons people use Google than the sorting algorithm. Sure, if Google's algorithms were garbage, it might matter to the end user, but they're not. If we were to base our decision on which search engine was better based solely on this study, then Bing would be superior. But by how much? Google is great, Bing is greater. I also have a Gmail account. and a blogspot blog (a google product). I use youtube. I use google docs. I say "google it". I don't have nearly that much invested in Microsoft technologies when it comes to my web based suite of products. there's just not enough motivation to me to change from Google to Bing.
I think the main goal of this campaign by Microsoft was to try to remind people that Bing was there, and hope they can convert or incept enough users to make it a contender with Google. Will it work? In my opinion, no.
Now unless you've been living under a rock or the oppressive heel of a World of Warcraft subscription, you've probably seen Microsoft's ads for IE9, Windows 8, and of course Bing.
Bing.
If you haven't yet, I'd go take the "bing it on challenge" to get more of an idea of what I'm talking about. Plus then I don't have to explain how it works. I'd also recommend reading Microsoft's explanation of the study.
The key findings of the study were the following:
"When the results were tallied, the outcome was clear – people chose Bing web search results over Google nearly 2:1 in the blind comparison tests. Specifically, of the nearly 1000 participants: 57.4% chose Bing more often, 30.2% chose Google more often; 12.4 % resulted in a draw.*
*The overall sampling error rate for the study is +/- 3 percent at the 95 percent confidence level."
As they say, the outcome is clear... ish. Ignoring the "draw" votes Bing won. There are certainly flaws in the study, but given that everyone on earth knows what google looks like, there are limitations to how the studies can be performed.
select 57.4 / 30.2 --1.9:1 select 54.4 / 33.2 --1.6:1 select 60.4 / 27.2 --2.2:1
But not to sound cynical, but who cares? There are more reasons people use Google than the sorting algorithm. Sure, if Google's algorithms were garbage, it might matter to the end user, but they're not. If we were to base our decision on which search engine was better based solely on this study, then Bing would be superior. But by how much? Google is great, Bing is greater. I also have a Gmail account. and a blogspot blog (a google product). I use youtube. I use google docs. I say "google it". I don't have nearly that much invested in Microsoft technologies when it comes to my web based suite of products. there's just not enough motivation to me to change from Google to Bing.
I think the main goal of this campaign by Microsoft was to try to remind people that Bing was there, and hope they can convert or incept enough users to make it a contender with Google. Will it work? In my opinion, no.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Relational Databases (or, How I'm Trying to Save Face)
Several months ago, I started getting active on SQLServerCentral and answered a post to a newbie about how to understand some common terminology about SQL; Rows, Columns, Fields, etc. Well, it turns out I didn't have a very good grasp on it, and the Godfather of SQL himself posted a thesis in response basically tearing me apart for not understanding the relational model correctly. (I wish I could find the article but I think at the time I was so mortified that I removed any trace of it from both my SQLServerCentral account and my email... shame on me).
That said, I think I've come up with a better way to describe a table in a relational database then analogizing it to an excel document - in laymens terms.. (Joe, if you're reading, please let me know!)
Think of a Table as an empty bank vault. At the entrance to the vault is a Guard wearing a shirt that says "Database Engine". Throughout the day, people come by to put things in the vault, remove things from the vault and change things in the vault. To do so, they have to bring in a box with a bunch of paper slips with things written on them; Words, numbers, hexadecimal expressions... and so on.
Now, when the vault was set up, the guard was given very specific instructions on what could be placed in the vault. Any box someone brought in may contain no more than some number of slips of paper. Each slip of paper must have a header on it saying what it represent (email address, phone number, etc). The guard is also responsible for making sure that certain slips of paper only have numbers of a certain length, or do not contain certain characters, and so forth. Each and every box MUST have a slip of paper with an email address. Then end result is, after the guard checks each new box, or instructions to change a box already in the vault, he gives it the OK, that it meets all the requirements set forth by the vaults creators. Over the course of the day, thousands, millions of boxes may come in and go out, but they all match the vaults requirements.
So what do you have? You have a room, with a bunch of containers with pieces of information that meet certain criteria. That's basically what a table is. The database engine constrains the types of data that enter a table so that at any time when you look in a box, you know certain pieces of information about that box. Note, this is a BIG departure from the way you would instinctively think about an Excel table, where it's basically a big (x,y) grid. Although there are parallels in how the data can be retrieve and thought about, the way the system stores the data and to understand how more complex queries work, it's critical to understand the difference.
I won't get into too much more, but you can start to see how things like joins, sorting, indexing and referential integrity flow from this. Along the indexing vein, say you want to know every box in a vault that has an email address that starts with the letter "T". Well, if all the boxes are just in a Heap on the floor (by the way, Heap is a SQL term for a table which has no "Clustered Index", or basically any logical physical ordering on the disk), you get to open each box, look at it's email slip, and then if its email starts with "T", add it to the list. How might one make this easier? Well if you physically structured the vault so that each box was placed adjacent to another box in alphabetical order, you could skim through the boxes till you found the section starting with "T", then see where the section starting with "U" started, and then just say "ok, everything between where "T" started and "U" started, has an email that starts with the letter 'T'". (again, the highly paid security guard is responsible for keeping them in order at all times.) Ok, so there's a bit more involved with indexing than just that, but when you think about a relational table like this, the operations you perform against them start to make a lot more sense.
That said, I think I've come up with a better way to describe a table in a relational database then analogizing it to an excel document - in laymens terms.. (Joe, if you're reading, please let me know!)
Think of a Table as an empty bank vault. At the entrance to the vault is a Guard wearing a shirt that says "Database Engine". Throughout the day, people come by to put things in the vault, remove things from the vault and change things in the vault. To do so, they have to bring in a box with a bunch of paper slips with things written on them; Words, numbers, hexadecimal expressions... and so on.
Now, when the vault was set up, the guard was given very specific instructions on what could be placed in the vault. Any box someone brought in may contain no more than some number of slips of paper. Each slip of paper must have a header on it saying what it represent (email address, phone number, etc). The guard is also responsible for making sure that certain slips of paper only have numbers of a certain length, or do not contain certain characters, and so forth. Each and every box MUST have a slip of paper with an email address. Then end result is, after the guard checks each new box, or instructions to change a box already in the vault, he gives it the OK, that it meets all the requirements set forth by the vaults creators. Over the course of the day, thousands, millions of boxes may come in and go out, but they all match the vaults requirements.
So what do you have? You have a room, with a bunch of containers with pieces of information that meet certain criteria. That's basically what a table is. The database engine constrains the types of data that enter a table so that at any time when you look in a box, you know certain pieces of information about that box. Note, this is a BIG departure from the way you would instinctively think about an Excel table, where it's basically a big (x,y) grid. Although there are parallels in how the data can be retrieve and thought about, the way the system stores the data and to understand how more complex queries work, it's critical to understand the difference.
I won't get into too much more, but you can start to see how things like joins, sorting, indexing and referential integrity flow from this. Along the indexing vein, say you want to know every box in a vault that has an email address that starts with the letter "T". Well, if all the boxes are just in a Heap on the floor (by the way, Heap is a SQL term for a table which has no "Clustered Index", or basically any logical physical ordering on the disk), you get to open each box, look at it's email slip, and then if its email starts with "T", add it to the list. How might one make this easier? Well if you physically structured the vault so that each box was placed adjacent to another box in alphabetical order, you could skim through the boxes till you found the section starting with "T", then see where the section starting with "U" started, and then just say "ok, everything between where "T" started and "U" started, has an email that starts with the letter 'T'". (again, the highly paid security guard is responsible for keeping them in order at all times.) Ok, so there's a bit more involved with indexing than just that, but when you think about a relational table like this, the operations you perform against them start to make a lot more sense.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
