Toys

Movies
As I have received so many DVDs over the Christmas holidays I had to update my movie collection database. The latest version, as always, is on our server.

Playing around with this, and my book collection database amongst others, brought back the feelings of just how much I love databases. I wish I could explain it without sounding like an accountant trying to explain why he actually enjoys fiscal opportunities (tax breaks) and successfully reconciling a bank statement. It’s like a joke… it just should never be explained. However you know I’m going to try.

I basically love the feeling of taking raw data (letters and numbers in columns and rows linked to a bunch of other letters and numbers in columns and rows) and getting out interesting or useful information which is transformed in to reports and graphs. It’s actually the programming of the query (SQL) necessary to get the information out of the database that I enjoy the most. It’s the simple pleasure of every programmer when a function works. It’s the basic knowledge that the computer has just done something which it would not have been able to do without the amazingly magical piece of programming code you have just written, debugged and executed. It’s like an artistic creation which reaches its final stages. I just plain love it when my programs work. It’s a definite feeling of pride which, embarrassingly enough, borders upon feelings of Godlike power. 25 years later and I still get that more than slight jolt of pleasure every time something I write works.

This is what computers do best. They process tons of raw information and produce more useful summarised information in a way that either would be impossible by humans or would take so much time that the end result would be so incredibly out of date so as to make it completely useless.

It’s my movie database that lets me know that Bernard Lee (“M” in the James Bond series) has appeared as an actor in more movies in our collection than any other; that George Lucas has directed the most movies in our collection; that we have more comedies than any other genre and more arguably useful information such as the fact that I bought most of my movies in 2005 and most of them from Amazon France.

A suburbanite’s dream
I ordered the damn thing on December 5th. They debited my cheque on December 12th. The product was supposed to arrive 6 days later. It didn’t arrive until today, January 4th!

When I was a kid my mother used to take my sister and I out to visit my uncle Don and aunt Shirley in New Jersey. They had a house so this was probably our healthy visit to the country. There are two things I remember most about these trips and they both involve the basement. I don’t know why I remember spending so much time in the basement. Uncle Don used to suddenly look up and say “train coming” and about 30 to 60 seconds later the train would pass. He would even be able to tell us exactly where the train was going. Don had memorised the schedules of the passing trains of course. But I always thought it was a bit magical. But the memory which remains the strongest in my mind is the pool table in the basement. This was the definition of “cool” in my mind at that age and in that era. Pool tables were the “cool” things one found in bars and pool halls. Those were the places I would read about it detective novels and see on television. But to have a pool table in your own house, be able to practice and play whenever you wanted, was just beyond “cool”. Unbeknownst to most people who know me, probably including my wife although there are definitely days when I believe she’s been reading my mind for years, I have always promised myself that I too would get a pool table if ever I got a house. Promises sometimes are kept and dreams sometimes come true.

The delivery guy arrived all on his own. He couldn’t possibly get a 150 kg palette off of the lorry by himself. I therefore had to help him as there was no way I was letting him leave with the thing after waiting so long. I’m not supposed to be lifting anything, and I’m certainly a hell of a lot lighter and weaker than I used to be, but what the doctors don’t know can’t hurt them. After a lot of lifting and tilting we got the thing in to the cellar where it will live. I then called my friend Robbie who came round to help put it together. It actually didn’t take that long to put together and was not that complicated. If Robbie could handle it, with my intellectual assistance of course, it couldn’t have been that complicated. Once we got it built we had to try it out. I lost the first game ever played on my own pool table. But we spent the rest of the evening playing pool. We stopped for dinner of course but then we were back out there going at it again after dinner and until he had to go get the métro home. It was an awful lot of fun and I look forward to the future.





NetCams
Up to now we have 3 NetCams in the house. NetCams are like WebCams except that instead of being plugged in to a computer they are plugged directly in to the network. They are therefore accessible on the network in the house but, as our network is permanently connected to the Internet, they are also accessible from any computer on the Internet anywhere in the world. Two of these NetCams are private. You have to enter a user name and password to use them. They are just next to each of the televisions in our house. One’s in the living room (Salon) and the other’s in the kitchen. Part of their original use was for us to be able to keep track of Alexandra who would constantly watch television when she was supposed to be doing something else. But they actually have come in quite handy since I’ve been sick as they’ve allowed Desney to keep an eye on me and see how I’m doing when I’m either trying to eat in the kitchen or lying down in the living room. The other NetCam is public and anyone can connect to it. They just have to know the address. That’s the NetCam in my office. I refer to that as the Cabinet Derek Erb Cam.

Having added the pool table in the cellar, which also just happens to house our wine collection, I thought it would be a good idea to add a public camera in there. You can now watch us playing pool, whenever that may be, as well as whenever we pop down to pull out a bottle or two or three from the cellar. It’s just a matter of pure luck if you ever actually get to see any of us in there, as it will mostly be pitch black, but it works: I now refer to the Cellar as the Games Room and The Games Room Cam is now online.

Toys
All of these toys and such also help to keep my mind off of my body which is a very, very good thing. The less I think of the pain the more I don’t feel it. Keeping my mind busy is actually probably the best pain killer medical science can provide.

The only difference between a boy and a man is the price of his toys.