I am not quiet sure what the point of this giant jumbo screen is other than to make you go woah. The shopping area is called the “The Place”
The Place
The Place
One thing I wasn’t really expecting in Beijing was the amount of neon signs and the number of TV’s, you see all round the city they have them on the streets and in the buses and trams, and in the metro stations.
So what does a beer drinker do on his birthday in Beijing China. He drinks beer, and good beer at that. We were are the Kro’s Nest next to workers stadium. The beer was good but the pizza was average at best, soggy crust, lack of toppings other than cheese and tomato sauce.
From Left to right, Brooklyn Pale Ale, Brooklyn Brown, Rogue Brutal Bitter, Brooklyn Lager, Rogue Dead Guy Ale.
Each bottle has its own label translated on the back. We tried to save them but they were too well glued.
Well, technically only the first photo is from day one, but day one was almost a right off due to travel and time zone changes.
CCTV building from Hongying's parents house
Morning Market Beijing
Morning Market
Dashanla Street Beijing
Tiananem Square
Olympic Display at Tianamen Square
Hongying at Beijing National Theatre
National Grand Threater
Since I always seem to be needing passport photos I thought I would see if there is a cheaper way of doing it rather than going into a camera shop. The last time I did it they used a digital camera and printed them off in house, the rub is they charged me almost $7 for for this. This time I got a co worker to take the photo, a quick online search and I came up with http://www.epassportphoto.com/ where they crop and format your photo to give you a 4×6 jpeg with 6 photos for free. A few minutes later I have uploaded the jpg to Ritz Camera and I am about to go grab the picture. Total cost $0.22. That sure beats the $8 they would have charged me if I went into the shop and asked them to do it.
Since we have an offer from Councilman Hursh to install bike racks in Herndon I thought I would go out and map the ones I have found. You can see my results below.
If you know of any other locations please let me know.
I didn’t get a chance to dive due to playing dodge the hurricane, but we get a change to go to the Everglades National Park. The first day we went out to Shark Valley where they have a tram ride that takes you into the park and gives you a chance to see the environment and some of the wild life. The Second day we started and Royal Palm and made our way down to Flamingo bay, where the park ranger wouldn’t come out of his office unless he had a mosquito net over his head.
Shark Valley: With a new camera and lens, I am still learning what the limits are, this time I had a go at taking photos of wildlife and didn’t quite get the shot I wanted. Not sure if it was the Vibration Reduction, the Shutter Speed or lack of depth of field but this shot isn’t quite in focus for the whole bird.
Shark Valley: The two in the shot were young deer that were out in front of the Tram. The driver was scared that they wouldn’t cross over and join their mum who was waiting in the water across the way.
Shark Valley: One of my favorite shots
Royal Palm: Mr Alligator, this was one of 2 watching us from the water.
Royal Palm: This was the third one we saw that day, he was about 2 to 3 feet away cooling him self off under a tree.
Royal Palm: I didn’t quite get this guy all in focus, but still a good shot.
Royal Palm: Mr Frog eyes just above the water
Miami: Ocean Dr
Miami: Ocean Dr
I have a database that I am exporting data from. Once it is in text format I run the dos sort command, then finally compress it. Everything was going well till I noticed that my dump files had lines that were being split in two
I started looking at the original file and found it contained Ascii character 0 or Null. So my first response was to try isnull(column,’-‘) in the query, but that didn’t work
I checked the lookup tables and found that a join was matching and returning an empty string.
On reading the BCP manual I found this
out copies from the database table or view to a file. If you specify an existing file, the file is overwritten. When extracting data, note that the bcp utility represents an empty string as a null and a null string as an empty string.
So nulls are converted to empty strings and empty strings are converted to nulls? Who thought this was a good idea?
So I changed my sql to be NULLIF(column,”) and now everyone is happy.
On my commute home last night my Trek 4300 turned over 1,000 miles.
I bought my bike just before Bike to work day
In response to Councilman Husch’s proposal to confiscate all bicycles that are chained, tied to trees or road sign posts in the public right-of-ways, I decided to take a trip out to Historic Herndon and see who would be affected by his proposal.
I saw a lot of bikers, most of them were using the trail to travel through Herndon. Other were stopping to buy drinks or ice cream. Two bikes were locked outside Jimmy’s Tavern. Another outside the bread shop.
What I didn’t find were any people who would fit the profile of an illegal, instead I found mostly white Americans.
As a biked a little further along the trail I spotted this couple locking up their bikes to a street sign next to an open house.
The couple had biked to Herndon and were looking to buy a town house in Herndon specifically because it was close to the trail. They chose to lock up their bike to the street sign at Branch Drive because it was close to their destination and was a solid secure object.
If Councilman Husch’s proposal becomes law, I wonder what their reaction would have been to coming back to find their bikes had been confiscated?
Councilman Husch said that a Virginia Law already prohibits bicycles from being chained to signposts or left in the public right of way. I searched the Virginia law and didn’t find anything that would appear to give them the authority to confiscate bikes parked in the public right of way. So I would ask Mr Husch to let us know the section of the code he is referring to so we can review it.
