2009-11-05T13:37:23-08:00 http://wal.github.com/ wal.github.com man@wal.github.com 2009-11-05T00:00:00-08:00 http://wal.github.com/2009/11/05/Dreyfus <p>Inspired by a great talk I attended today by <a href="http://twitter.com/Simmy">Ryan Sims</a> I've been swoting up on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition">Dreyfus model</a> which defines a model for new skill acquisition. Thinking about this model while acquiring new skills allows you to focus on what you need to do to get to the next level (eventually Expert), rather than just simply spending time with a new technology/subject which I all too often do. Its about 'learning smartly'.</p> 2009-10-27T00:00:00-07:00 http://wal.github.com/2009/10/27/innotop <p><a href="http://innotop.sourceforge.net">innotop</a> is a fantastic tool to investigating what's going on live inside your MySQL server. Use it to spot locks, deadlocks, long running queries, buffer sizes, replication status</p> 2009-10-26T00:00:00-07:00 http://wal.github.com/2009/10/26/HAVING-SQL-Clause <p>I've been using the HAVING clause to simplify my SQL queries. It allows you to specify a condition for an aggregate function used in the SELECT list (doing so in the WHERE clause is illegal).</p> <p>So to find the politicians who are receiving a total of more than $50,000 of expenses</p> <pre> <code> SELECT politician, SUM(payment) FROM expences GROUP BY politician HAVING SUM(payment) > 50000; </code> </pre> <p>Nice!</p>