All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

ORA-06552: PL/SQL: Compilation Unit Analysis Terminated

Database, Programming

Today I received a strange error from Oracle, for what appeared to be no good reason:

  1. ORA-06552: PL/SQL: Compilation unit analysis terminated
  2. ORA-06553: PLS-320: The declaration of the type of this expression is incomplete or malformed

I received the error when attempting to create a trigger on a newly created table. I could create triggers on other tables without any errors, however on the new table – it would error every time.

The table definition included a column named timestamp with the data type timestamp. Oracle was happy enough for me to create the table, however it refused to let me create a trigger on the table with a column name over lapping a reserved word.

The solution was simple, renamed the column in question to use a non-reserved word and everything continued as normal. I must say though, I think it is strange that it would let me create the table using the reserved word in the first place if it was going to complain about me using other standard Oracle features which would error as a by product of the reserved word.

1 Vs 100 Game Show

TV

Eddie McGuire is back hosting the latest Channel 9 game show offering, 1 Vs 100. The new game show goes something like this, someone is picked as the one. Once selected, they have to answer a series of questions and so do the mob of 100 opponents.

The contestant is also given three chances or from the millionaire days, three life lines. Each of the changes or life lines can only be used once each, just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The twist on the chances or life lines this time is that they all involve the mob in some way:

Ask the mob
Two of the mob are singled out who have a correct and incorrect answer. Each mob member can tell the contestant why they chose that option and the contestant can also discuss their choice. Since there are only two of the mob selected, this in effect acts like the 50/50 from the days of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Poll the mob
Polling the mob will tell the contestant how many of the mob voted for each of the three options
Trust the mob
The contestant rests their game show fate into the hands of the mob. Whatever option the mob has the most votes for, is the option that is selected on behalf of the contestant and they don’t have a choice but to see the decision followed through.

After successfully answering a question, the answers from the mob are revealed as well; at which point everyone with an incorrect answer are eliminated from the following round. After the results of the dwindling one hundred opponents are revealed, the contestant then gets a choice to complete the game and leave with the money he or she has accumulated or play on.

The decision making process of the contestant was the most painful point in the entire show, where the mob are just yelling at the contestant trying to convince he or she to play one more round. Of course, they are all waving their hands and gesturing, yes, come on, just one more round. This went on and on for far too long in my opinion and it has no real bearing on the game; its as if it was there to simply amp up the noise level and the crowd a little for the sake of it.

Overall, it was a pretty reasonable game show I suppose. 1 Vs 100 bears striking resemblance to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on many fronts, however the one which it doesn’t complete on from what I noticed was the difficulty of the questions. It seemed as though they were considerably easier than what you’d expect on millionaire – then again, it is a different show, which should draw different contestants; so that is probably ok.

On a side note, does anyone else think it is inappropriate for Eddie McGuire to be hosting a game show when he is the Chief Execute Office of one of Australia’s largest television networks? I was quite shocked in February 2006 when he was appointed as the CEO of Channel Nine and to see him still hosting a game show; it just seems wrong.

Clean Sweep

Sport

Towards the start of 2006, I was pleased to find out that some of my work colleagues enjoyed playing squash. It wasn’t long after I found about their squash habits that we started organising semi-regular casual games. That whole experience was a bunch of fun, as trying to play squash like tennis really didn’t work well – so the process of learning a new game and the techniques behind it was great.

About six months ago, I decided it was about time I joined one of our local Gold Coast squash clubs. Without a lot of thought or discussion about the matter and based on one of the guys recommendations – I joined the Robina Squash Club.

Robina Squash Club uses the squash facilities which are associated to Bond University. Bond University have two good condition, glass backed courts with air conditioning. Apparently there used to be four courts, however two of them were turned into fitness rooms to extend the university gym facilities.

The new squash season (my second) recently commenced at the Robina Squash Club and I’ve been having a blast. Since I first started playing in the squash fixtures six months ago, my game has improved out of sight – to a point where I’m regularly challenging or winning games.

This evening was quite a milestone, as I won my first match against one of the strongest players in my group four sets to nil! My competitor, Tony, would hit the black of the squash ball if he could. He just loves hitting the ball hard and I do mean hard. The last time I played Tony, we drew two games each and he pipped me by a few points to claim the win over all. This week, I managed to snatch all four sets off him – if only by a point or two; I still won all four sets. It was quite an accomplishment and I’m pretty pleased with my progress over the last six months; hopefully the next six will be just as good.

For those looking to play squash in the Gold Coast region, you can contact:

Robina Squash Club
University Drive
Robina QLD, 4226
0427 627 229

WordPress Security Vulnerability

Blogging, Programming, Software

Some period of time after WordPress 2.1.1 was released, one or more of the WordPress servers was breached and the attacker edited the PHP source of a handful of files within the 2.1.1 download files.

The WordPress crew were fast to react to the news and have released a statement, which states that they have boycotted the release of WordPress 2.1.1 as they don’t know exactly when the attacker breached their servers.

The WordPress development team have also released WordPress 2.1.2 which is recommended as a mandatory upgrade if you previously upgraded to WordPress 2.1.1 within the last week or so. I would expect that in the coming weeks, we’ll see some new security initiatives from the WordPress team to try and reduce the chances of this happening again in the future.

Canon Ixus 65 Digital Camera

Hardware

On the weekend, Claire and I ventured down to our local Harvey Norman and Domayne super stores to investigate buying a new portable digital camera. Claire and I first dipped our toes into the world of digital cameras about three years ago when we purchased a Canon Ixus 400. At the time, the Canon Ixus 400 was one of the upper models within the Canon portable range and we paid approximately AUD$1150 for it including some simple accessories.

After a lot of use and wear and tear, the Canon Ixus 400 is still in perfect working order; it just seemed like a good time to upgrade to something a little more current. After investigating what sort of features the current range of compact digital cameras have, we came out with a short list:

  • 6.0+ megapixels
  • 2.5+ inch LCD screen
  • 3x+ optical zoom
  • Physically about the size of a pack of cards
  • Very light

The two serious contenders where the Canon Ixus 65 and an Olympus FE240. On paper, the two cameras have an excellent feature set:

  Canon Ixus 65 Olympus FE240
Megapixels 6.0 megapixels 7.1 megapixels
LCD Screen 3 inch 2.5 inch
Optical Zoom 3x 5x
Dimensions (mm) 90.3 (w) x 56.8 (h) x 20.2 (d) 93.5 (w) x 56.0 (h) x 23.4 (d)
Weight (g) 145 (chassis only) 115 (chassis only)
Image Size (px) 2816 x 2112
2272 x 1704
1600 x 1200
640 x 480		 3072 x 2304
2048 x 1536
1920 x 1080 (16:9)
640 x 480

When you look at the above list, both digital cameras have an excellent feature set. However, considering its a portable camera – the numbers are not the be all and end all of buying. It’s important to actually try and use the camera and navigate through the menu options to do other actions as well. When navigating through the menu options, the Canon Ixus 65 had a superior navigation system, there is no doubt about it. The buttons on the camera were easier to use and I personally thought that the on screen display was easier to understand as well.

Both cameras have a feature called image stabilisation, which essentially means its meant to deal with you moving the camera around while taking a photo. It turns out, holding a camera that is only 100-150gm perfectly still while taking a photo is quite difficult and without the image stabilisation technology, all of your photos will turn out blurry because you’re moving (without realising it). After taking a handful of photos, it seemed that the Canon had the goods over the Olympus. What I’m not totally sure about is whether being indoors may or may not have had any impact on that.

Both of the portable cameras have large LCD view finders – especially when compared to the 1.5″ LCD on the Canon Ixus 400. The Olympus FE240 has the smaller of the two LCDs and unfortunately it also lacked the clarity of the larger Canon display. The colour through the Olympus was pretty reasonable, however you could see what appeared to be grid lines from the crystals in the LCD. It wouldn’t have bothered me particularly, knowing that it wouldn’t have an impact on the image quality of the photos – however Claire thought it was quite important since you quite often end up showing people photos which are on your digital camera.

In the end, both of these compact digital cameras were more than capable of taking your happy snaps. We ended up going with the Canon as our existing Ixus 400 has been such a reliable little unit. The image quality on the LCD on the Canon was clearly better than on the Olympus and the Canon Ixus 65 also had quite a few different photo filters (such as sepia, black & white, black & white with feature colours, ..).

I can’t wait to take it for a run when we’re out and about next and report back with some, what are hopefully, some nice photos.