Cirque du Soleil

After two heavy weekends (team building and helping a friend with a work) I told myself that I deserve some fun. Ok, the teambuilding was fun. Sso I bought 2 tickets on Cirque du Soleil in Vienna. Yeah, I can't wait to see them and I hope I could make some pictures. But I think that won't be possible, anyway, I'll take my camera.

Case sensitive table names in oracle - WTF

We imported an M$Sql database to Oracle and the table names were case sensitive, all like tWHATEVER, tUSERS. Our program was not working because of bad SQL commands. After renaming a table (all uppercase) it becomes case insensitive.

Solution 1: rename all tables by hand using a tool (like TOAD)
Solution 2: write a script that does it for you, renaming by hand hundreds or thousands of tables is not an option. Here's the script, it's not error prone but works.

Known bugs: if table name is already case insensitive, it fails on renaming.

DECLARE
  string varchar2(200);
BEGIN
for tabs in (SELECT table_name, upper(table_name) as uppername FROM user_tables)
loop
  string := 'alter table ' || tabs.table_name || ' rename to ' || tabs.uppername;
  execute immediate string;
end loop;
END;

Lightroom 2 - edit more pictures in Photoshop Disabled

So, I began to use Lightroom 2 and after a time a really like it despite it needs a strong machine. I use it in combination with Photoshop 10.0. So when you select more pictures and want them to edit in photoshop, in context menu the options for editing all in layers, panorama, hdr are disabled.

Solution: LR2 requires photoshop CS3 10.0.1, you need to update! That's it. Also there's a LR2.1 patch coming, already in test phase that should fix many bugs.

Istanbul trip

So, finally a decided to write about our trip to Istanbul, with a beautiful historical centre and its overgrown surrounding. I believe this city could be more atmospheric with just one or two million of population or even less. 15 million is just too much in its unorganized, annoying, dirty way.

We arrived 2am local time, the humidity was real high, got problems with breathing for a while. Waited a long time to buy visa, then again for passport control and again for money change, many things to improve. not talking about the travel back, when computer system was off and everything was made by hand, printed passenger lists, ... we really enjoyed :S

Ok, so we got to the city, 5am, tired, where to go? where's the hotel? when we can check in? was funny, bought water and after an hour of decision making we headed to the hotel. We wanted to leave there our bags until we can check in but we were allowed to that right at that time. great :) sleeping till noon... this was the pre-first day :)

Just to make it faster, the following days we visited many tourist attractions. Nice/boring/interesting but all in common quite expensive.

Tourist attractions

Galata tower for 10 lira, with modern elevator in it??? restaurant and nightclub at the top, expected something else. and the view nothing special as the humidity was really high, go there morning or late afternoon.

Hagia Sofia - 20 lira, inside a great constructions for many years now used for renovation , hides 25% of inside. anyway interesting if you have a guide (agreed on 10 lira in advance and asked 20 when finished, simply Turks).

More in Sultanahmet - lot of things to see here:

• Hippodrom - boring
• Basilica Cistern - expensive for those two medusa heads :)
• other mosques - see one, seen all
• Spice Bazaar - nice colors, made for tourists
• Grand Bazaar - nice old building, only tourist attraction nowadays
• Archeological museum - were not there
• Gulhane park - thats nice
• Istanbul University Park - ok, boring

By ship on Bosporus - 20 lira (tourist price!), inconvenient, crowded ship, slow, boring, no entertaining, no information told what to see etc.

Night life
We were staying in a hotel on Nevizade street, the centre of restaurants, shops, pubs and entertainment. Looks great, had much fun there. The beer (Efes) is really like urine, sorry guys, that's it and it's really overpriced for the quality (5-10 lira for 0.5l). The food is ok, sometimes strangely spicy, but very small, I needed 2 or 3 times more to have the same as used to. We enjoyed the bar on a roof, but there are less peaple and less fun, the view is usually not interesting (maybe in 360, but was not there) and from the toilet windows lower the wind blows the smell of urine, yeah! So, nothing special in roof bars.

People
Turkish people are annoying till they don't convince you and after that the services are not as good. They want to sell you anything for many times more than it really costs. Don't show them your purse or how much money you have, check twice how much is the return. In shops there are usually no price tags, don't tell any amount you wish to pay, cause even 50% discount is often many times more, and if you tell the price, you have to buy! Check for prices at more places, but let them to offer the price, just say too much.

Photo
I planned to make lot of pictures, think about composition and exposure but usually was not that way :) Tired, hangover, no mood, in hurry... ? Here you are few, and check my flickr page for more.