Today Avega, the company who i work for, has fixed some problems so we finally can use the fat Outlook client! YEES! Fat client rules!

Just another great utility that everybody has at their disposal… Quite often you will need the columns from a Query Analyser result for further handling, to put as header in Excel or to use in another query. The sad part is that they are not easily captured, if you get the result as a grid you can’t reach them and if you get the result as text they are separated with spaces to the length of the content of each column. So this is my street/no fuss solution - it might be faster ways of doing this will SQL but this is one way. Execute the SQL-statement you want the columns for and return the result as text Select and copy the header row Paste the header row into a Notepad-document Search for space (“ “) and replace with two commas (,,) When done do another search for two commas...

I have spent the main part of the last two days compiling SQL-statements with Excel, and it’s actually quite good at it. With the string functions (concatenate, substring, find and the usual suspects) you can create SQL-statements for a large number of rows quite simply. I have a large number of strings that need to be manipulated (done with replace) and then all these string needs to be sent to a stored procedure. This stored procedure call is created by concatenating the string from the manipulated column with the SQL-statement to make the call. When all of this is done it’s just a matter of filling the columns. Works like charm. Then i needed about 2 hours to muster the strength to run the script, but that’s another story

While I am on the subject i might as well reveal how the Swedish Brass Band Championships will go down. This year it will be tighter, there is a two new band in Sweden - both will very impressive line up and good potential. Windcorp - was around last year and did very well indeed. An impressive second place after only a few months of playing together. Very impressive. Stockholm BrassBand - this is the newest band and also one with the most respectful line-up. The band is made up mostly of professionals in the Stockholm orchestras. But, i am sorry, they will never have a chance to beat the current champions, Gothenburg . I have played with them for a year and a half an know what they are made of. They mean serious business, also they have signed Nicholas Childs to do rehearsals for a whole week before...

The Nationals (British Nationals that is) of this year has been battled out this weekend. And since the test piece was “easier” than usually a surprising result were to be expected. However this did not happen, but it was good to see Grimethorpe (for all you non-brass-people, that is the band that starred in Brassed Off) take a big title. They have only won entertainment stuff for a while and is such a great band so they deserved it. Black Dyke missed out on a double (Open + Nationals) but still is always up there. Impressive. When will Buy as You View Cory (third) ever win something? They haven’t done that in a while, to my knowledge. Maybe time to turn away from the old style playing that they are into (with fast, uncontrolled vibrato as one of the main feature). More to read on this can be found here,...

Saw a movie yesterday that i must recommend; Lucky Number Slevin (http://www.slevin-movie.com/). It’s in the same spirit as The usual suspects and i really enjoyed it. Great performances by some great actors also. Lucy Lui was awsome and the guy (Josh Hartnett) playing the lead character did a great job too. So if You havn’t seen it … Do it now! It is well worth the time and money.

Returned to Stockholm from a small tour… exhausted of course. Funny how playing and spending so much time together bonds you and makes new friends. I really had a great time with the band. The playing from the band also took of, and became better and better. For me too, even though a major split spoiled the very last note of the encore. Really embarrassing, but hey - that’s life. Gave (swedish expression) blood on my tooth though. More. More practice!

Found a “splitter” (the technical term i presume) that i liked, with the very descriptive name Slice Audio File Splitter. Seems to be free also, which means that i like it more ;-)

Played a concert last night…. The sound of applause is so nice. The term rewarding has never been more appropriate. And yet the act in itself is very basic, almost childish. I wonder when that was invented. Or if it’s still different from different parts of the world. I’ve heard that deaf people don’t clap their hands but wiggle them instead, that might be used in other parts of the world also. I recorded the concert on my IRiver (love it) and today I will try to get hold of a program that splits Mp3’s.

The test were not done by the end of yesterday, which leads to that my trusted mobile still is safe. From now on i will be more careful on what to bet on. Maybe smaller, easier to swallow things.