Category: Random

It seems like every other post I read mentions AJAX somewhere. The whole AJAX thing seems like a total farse to me. Let’s take a quick walk through the recent history of application development:

• Back in the day everything was host-based. Everyone had dumb terminals linked to the corporate mainframe.
• Fast forward a few years and host-based computing is evil and client-server rules.
• Fast forward a few years and client-server is evil and everybody wants multi-tier architecture and browser clients, which has essentially moved us back to a variation on the host-based systems with clunky interfaces.
• Bringing us to the present, where people still want their multi-tier environments, but they want client-server style flexibility in their interfaces.

So AJAX comes to the rescue, providing client-server style controls and functionality in web pages by roping together lots of stuff we’ve been using for years. The problem is, it brings all those old problems of cross-browser compatibility back into focus.

I read an article by Frank Nimphius this morning, where he mentions some of the problems with running AJAX applications in browsers, like the “Back” button, and asks if we need an AJAX client, rather than a browser. I understand what he’s saying, but I think he’s asking the wrong question. AJAX is a cobbled together solution for a bigger problem. The problem is the browser environment, so I say fix the problem.

Browsers are good at what they were designed for, but they don’t do complex client-server type work without using poor makeshift solutions like AJAX. You can use ActiveX controls or Java Applets, but neither is universally accepted and both suffer similar problems to AJAX with respect to browser navigation. What we really need is a new standard web application client or runtime environment with all the required functionality built in. That way complex web development can move out of the dark ages. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but it’s got to beat the rag-tag AJAX solutions I’ve seen so far!

Cheers

Tim…

It’s one year ago today that I started blogging and here is the first blog post.

It’s been a year of random posts, with the odd bit of Oracle information thrown in for good measure. Thanks to anyone who’s followed the blog. I’ll try and maintain the low quality nature of this publication 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

During lane swimming, when using a lane marked as clockwise, do you:

1. Float on your back in the middle of the lane.
2. Walk a bit, swim a bit, then walk a bit more.
3. Swim anti-clockwise.
4. Swim up and down the middle of the lane, making it impossible for others to overtake.
5. Swim diagonally.
6. Stop and rest part way through the length.
7. All of the above.

Judging by the actions of one woman today, number (7) seems to be the correct answer! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

A Dell server goes bang. Dell send an engineer to swap the motherboard. The server still doesn’t work, but now the beep error code implies the memory is shot. Dell refuse to ship more parts and will only provide a complete kit swap. The estimated time for memory would be a couple of hours, compared to 6 and 14 days for the kit swap! As you can imagine we were not amused.

Cheers

Tim…

The temperature in the UK has been pretty high recently, which has had an adverse affect on the temperature in our server room. It’s only taken three years of moaning, but I think the message is finally starting to sink in, helped by the fact that some of our kit is switching itself off with heat errors and one server has burnt out completely.

Why is it people will spend loads of money on fault tolerant kit, then think it’s OK to install it in a sauna?

I must admit to feling a certain amount of satisfaction whilst saying, “I told you so!” 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

This is the new home for my blog. Please update your links to point to this URL:

https://oracle-base.com/blog/

The RSS feed for the blog is:

https://oracle-base.com/blog/feed/

I’ve not decided on the theme I’m going to use at this point, but this will do for the moment 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I recently discussed how I felt moderately less scared about spiders since my encounter with a tarantual. Just a little update on the situation…

The other day a very large house spider was sitting on my bathroom window sill. I was feeling rather brave so I attempted to pick it up, but as my hand got close, the spider made a run for it. As soon as the legs started to move at lightning speed, I yanked back my hand, screamed and generally went into convulsions for a few seconds. Out came the glass and the piece of paper. Both the spider and I lived through the ordeal, but the spider definitely came out on top.

Last night I was teaching Yoga to some friends and a small spider ran across the floor towards one of the girls. I placed my hand on the floor and the spider ran on to it. The whole operation wasn’t quite the success I hoped for, as the spider ran off my hand before I could get it out of the door. Even so, we both survived and I’m marking this down as a success.

I’m kinda scared of sharks too. If anyone would like to help me confront this fear by donating a “swimming with sharks” holiday, I would gladly accept 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I’m guessing you’ve heard of global warming 🙂

One of the UK breakfast TV channels has been running a “Going Green” spot in an attempt to get people to reduce their household carbon footprint. Tips include:

• Shower rather than taking a bath.
• Turn off electrical equipment at the wall, rather than using standby. Apparantly, if everyone in the UK turned off their TVs at the wall, rather than using standby, we could close down a couple of power stations.
• Use energy saving light bulbs.
• Turn down your central heating by a couple of degrees. A reduction of 1 degree can typically save 10% of your heating costs.
• Recycle as much as possible.

I feel kind of inspired by this so this morning I turned off my TV and PC at the wall. Plans for the weekend include:

• Turn off my fridge at the wall. I’ve had nothing in the fridge or the freezer for weeks, so keeping it turned on is crazy. Of course, some would say I should actually buy some food, but that sounds like a mugs game to me 🙂
• Buy some energy saving bulbs. I have this habit of doing most things in the dark because I’m just too lazy to change bulbs when they blow. Once you get used to not having lighting, you tend not to bother, even when you do have working bulbs. Even so, on the occasion I need a light, it would be sensible to use an energy efficient one.
• My heating is already set quite low, but as I’m hardly ever in the house I figure I can go down another couple of degrees without much bother. I have thermostats on my radiators which are set real low in the rooms I don’t use. I guess they should go down to zero.
• I already recycle all paper and cardboard and my area has a green rubbish collection for garden waste, but I’m a bit slack with everything else. I rarely have glass, like bottles, in the house, so I don’t naturally think of recycling it. From today, I will recycle all glass, cans and plastics.
• Most importantly, I’m going to try to be more aware about what I buy. It’s far to easy to buy products with loads of packaging. You don’t need to recycle if you don’t buy the rubbish in the first place.

I guess it’s only right that we all try to minimize the impact we have on the planet. I know industry and transport are the really big polluters, but every little helps!

Cheers

Tim…

Once again, some idiot who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, reads a couple of my articles, and announces to the world I’ve got it wrong. Strangely enough, on reading the “mistakes” it turns out it is the idiot that is incorrect, because he doesn’t know what a “#” comment is, he can’t use the correct terminology and he obviously hasn’t read the manual on the subject he is waxing lyrical about!

I would like to make a suggestion. If you think you’ve found a mistake in someone else’s work, whoever they are, you should do the following:

1. Read the article again to make sure you’ve understood it.
2. Contact the author to confirm a mistake is present.
3. If it turns out you are mistaken, have the decency to admit it, rather than trying to prolong the debate, thus wasting everyone’s time.

There are lots of people providing good content on the internet for free and it is inevitable that some mistakes will slip through. What we don’t need is a bunch of people waiting to jump on the slightest mistake and make a big deal out of it, or even worse, try to find fault where the is no fault.

Personally, I don’t mind people contacting me to ask about the contents of my articles. That’s why I have a comments section on the end of each article, a forum and a “Contact” page. What does get on my nerves is when I read posts on other forums where people criticize my articles without bothering to contact me, especially when the criticism is unfounded.

It seems these days we want everything for free, but when we get it we really don’t appreciate it.

Rant over 🙂

Cheers

Tim…