I am back from my vacations, I was at nice places in Switzerland like Rhone Glacier, underground lake of Saint-Leonard, Salt Mines of Bex, Rhine Waterfalls and more …
To keep up with the fun, here is a little quiz :
You have the numbers 1-3-4-6 and you need to achieve the number 24. The allowed operations are +, -, * and /
If I try to achieve 49 it is easy :
SQL> /
Enter value for n1: 1
old 14: (SELECT &n1 n
new 14: (SELECT 1 n
Enter value for n2: 3
old 17: SELECT &n2 n
new 17: SELECT 3 n
Enter value for n3: 4
old 20: SELECT &n3 n
new 20: SELECT 4 n
Enter value for n4: 6
old 23: SELECT &n4 n
new 23: SELECT 6 n
Enter value for result: 49
old 143: ) = &result
new 143: ) = 49
result
------------------------------------
(4+3)*(6+1)
(3+4)*(6+1)
(6+1)*(4+3)
(1+6)*(4+3)
(6+1)*(3+4)
(1+6)*(3+4)
(4+3)*(1+6)
(3+4)*(1+6)
8 rows selected.
Elapsed: 00:00:11.28
But for 24 it is not that simple 
at least for human !
Ok, in SQL I am using a plsql function to evaluate expression
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lsc_eval (expr VARCHAR2)
RETURN NUMBER
IS
x NUMBER;
BEGIN
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'begin :x := ' || expr || ';end;'
USING OUT x;
RETURN x;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS
THEN
RETURN NULL;
END;
/
I will post the rest of the code as a comment later 
fun, game, sql
riddle
I was honored to receive this trophy yesterday :
More results under http://www.sxv.ch/news_2006.php
game
Sunday, November 26th, 2006, I will defend my Title in the Chinese Chess Swiss Championship.
It is free and open to anyone !
event, game
I will be playing the The Geneva Bughouse Gathering 2006 tournament on Sat 19th August 2006. It is a variant of chess, very wild, played with four players in teams of two. The photo on my profile has been taken in the 2005 edition.
event, game
at least we got one record in the world cup 2006. We are the first team in world cup history that got eliminated without receiving one goal
game
this cow is funny, it is quite exceptional for Switzerland to play in the World Cup !
event, game
I bought a new PC at Eastern. I have installed 100Gb partition for Linux and 100Gb for Windows. I tried Fedora Core 5 and OpenSuse 10.0, in 64bit mode.
I currently spend most of my “free” time to prepare the OCA Application Server certification, next friday (28th).
Tonight I borrowed a game from a friend : Unreal Tournament 2004. I haven’t play such a game since a long time, and I must say, I enjoyed it very much. I am just overtired now. The graphic is fast, it is easy to master (well, I played at the novice level) and it is something I would never recommend to my kids ! Just shooting everywhere …
Well, they are just too young now, but Dora is really mastering Memory Game and she can even write her name when she achieved a high score! Yesterday she had her fourth birthday.
game
In case you like this game and live in Zurich, I will be playing the swiss championship tomorrow.
game
