I have dyslexia and while it is often considered a liability, I have never found it so, in fact it makes my life easier, you’re better at maths, you’re better at logical puzzles etc etc

However it does still bite me a little bit when I’m writing blog posts, I simply don’t see works that are just a little wrong, I don’t see where sentences don’t make any sense. The traditional way of getting round this it’s to copy and paste the text you have just written into a new format then reread it but that takes time and often doesn’t work

Enter the latest in the internet age, half the time now for blog posts I simply dictate them and then go back and review them. Gone are the days of dictation software taking ages to learn your voice and making more mistakes than it is worth, this post itself was just done via a phone in a couple of minutes, but even with modern technology mistakes are made, things don’t work out or things simply don’t scan when I read them back, but there is an easy fix, purely by accident I bumped into Amazon Polly. I just thought it was as a cool little WordPress plugin that converted all of your blog posts to speech, but now I’m the main user of it, whenever I do a blog post before publishing it I simply preview it and get Amazon Polly to read it back, it’s amazing how much that clears up bad words bad phrases and non existent punctuation

Give it a try and see what I mean 

As just about all computers now use USB-C as their main port, most of the historic Laptop docks have been replaced by generic USB -C hubs, in fact a proper dock is rare to see, and for the majority of the time these turn out to be rubbish in my opinion.

I have tried loads of them and they all have their own failings, be it bad pass through on the power or poor organisation of ports, some are even missing commonly used ports, but the worst offence to me is the fact that nearly all of them seems to insist on a hardwired USB-C Cable to attach them to your Machine, often only 6 inches long meaning you can never place the hub in a nice orderly place for all the cables that need to attach to it.

Thankfully I found one that gets over all of these issues, say hello to the StayGo USB-C Hub,  it looks just like the normal run of the mill dock but this one allows you to have your own USB-C cable, even though it does contain its own built-in short travel cable.

It’s made of metal therefore it has a little bit more weight to it and has nice rubber feet to stop it slipping, this combined with a nice layout and the full complement of needed ports means this is now my go to hub, why don’t more people design stuff like this.

Sometimes you want to scramble or anonymise data in a table , mainly so you can reuse or use ‘real’ data without having real names or details showing, and don’t want to screw up the formatting, so things like emails and phone numbers don’t break as well, as only doing it to certain fields

Yes I know this is a naff way to do it but given the shear number of dbas that do it this way I figured it was worth posting, also note that dont just use this as it is, move some of the replacement values around to give it your own unique values.

UPDATE **table_name** t

SET t.**field_you_want_to_update** = REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(

REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(

REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(

t.**field_you_want_to_update

, ‘a’, ‘g’), ‘b’, ‘w’), ‘c’, ‘c’), ‘d’, ‘x’), ‘e’, ‘f’), ‘f’, ‘v’), ‘g’, ‘b’), ‘h’, ‘y’), ‘i’, ‘m’), ‘j’, ‘u’), ‘k’, ‘e’), ‘l’, ‘p’), ‘m’, ‘l’), ‘n’, ‘a’), ‘o’, ‘t’), ‘p’, ‘z’)

, ‘q’, ‘d’), ‘r’, ‘h’), ‘s’, ‘k’), ‘t’, ‘n’), ‘u’, ‘s’), ‘v’, ‘o’), ‘w’, ‘i’), ‘x’, ‘q’), ‘y’, ‘r’), ‘z’, ‘j’), ‘A’, ‘G’), ‘B’, ‘I’), ‘C’, ‘H’), ‘D’, ‘M’), ‘E’, ‘A’), ‘F’, ‘Z’)

, ‘G’, ‘Y’), ‘H’, ‘L’), ‘I’, ‘B’), ‘J’, ‘K’), ‘K’, ‘J’), ‘L’, ‘N’), ‘M’, ‘C’), ‘N’, ‘T’), ‘O’, ‘R’), ‘P’, ‘S’), ‘Q’, ‘X’), ‘R’, ‘D’), ‘S’, ‘W’), ‘T’, ‘E’), ‘U’, ‘F’), ‘V’, ‘F’)

, ‘W’, ‘P’), ‘X’, ‘U’), ‘Y’, ‘V’), ‘Z’, ‘Q’), ‘0’, ‘9’), ‘1’, ‘3’), ‘2’, ‘6’), ‘3’, ‘7’), ‘4’, ‘1’), ‘5’, ‘2’), ‘6’, ‘3’), ‘7’, ‘0’), ‘8’, ‘4’), ‘9’, ‘5’)