Post New Year Life Update and Moving Pictures…

Today marks the end of my first full week of “normal” life for quite some time!

I’ve managed to:

  • Swim every day.
  • Get to all my Karate lessons.
  • Do Yoga with my Yoga-buddies, as well do my regular stint of teaching.
  • Get to the gym.
  • Stretch a couple of times a day.
  • Do a bit of writing for the website. I’m concentrating on the OCP 11g new features stuff, but I still don’t think I’m going to be ready in time for the exam going live.
  • Do a bit of reading.

Things are starting to feel something like normal again. My routine has been all over the place since November. First I was in OpenWorld. Then I had a cold for a couple of weeks. Then my dad died. Then it was the Christmas and New Year holiday. I must admit I feel a lot more settled and positive now I’ve got back into my usual rut. 🙂

I finished reading Moving Pictures last night. As I said before, it’s been hard to connect with this book. I’m already starting to remember little bits of it fondly, but the overall experience was that it was a hard slog. I can’t explain why.

I opened up the next book, Reaper Man, and the first 40 pages flew by before I noticed how late it was.

Life goes on…

Cheers

Tim…

Guards! Guards! Eric and Moving Pictures…

I recently finished reading Guards! Guards! and Eric. Guards! Guards! has got some great characters and is probably one of my favorite books so far in the series. Eric is a really short story, but it quite pacey, so it was pretty good.

I’m about a third of the way through Moving Pictures and I’m really struggling. There are lots of elements I should find funny, but it’s just not fitting together for me. I think the subject matter is just too dull. I don’t really care about a bunch of sideways references to Hollywood, or in this case Holy Wood. I’m hoping it’ll click so I’m going to persevere.

Cheers

Tim…

Equal Rites, Mort and Sourcery…

The plane journeys to OpenWorld and back gave me plenty of time to read…

Equal Rites – Nice enough story, but it didn’t find it all that funny compared to the previous two. Maybe I’m to invested in Rincewind and Twoflower. Maybe it just suffers in comparison to the first two, which are great.

Mort – Very funny. It’s a great idea and the Death is central to it, which is cool because he’s the best character on Discworld, in my opinion.

Sourcery – Rincewind is back on form. Conina is a great character. Coin is very mysterious. Good job.

Cheers

Tim…

Flashback, LogMiner and The Light Fantastic…

I put an article about Flashback and LogMiner new stuff live the other day, but forgot to put a post here. Better late than never. I feel a bit cheap and dirty admitting this, but I’m starting to like the web based Enterprise Manager. 🙂

The new LogMiner interface is really easy to use, and the integration with Flashback Transaction is right on the money. I guess LogMiner isn’t the sexiest of features, and I’ve had very little cause to use it since I first tried it out in 8i, but at least now it’s a no-brainer in terms of ease of use.

On a separate note, I finished The Light Fantastic last night. It seemed marginally more serious than the first book, but was still very funny. The introduction of character Cohen was very cool. Had me in stitches. I adopted a Sean Connery accent (in my head) for most of his dialog. Off to the book shop on the way home to buy the next couple…

Cheers

Tim…

The Colour of Magic…

Last night I finished reading The Colour of Magic. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but reading isn’t really my bag. If the writing style is too complicated I quickly become lost or bored, or both.

When I started this book it was a bit unnerving because there is a barrage of weird names and the story seems to skip around all over the place. A couple of times I assumed I had missed some pages out, only to find that the huge change in tack was intentional. Quite confusing, but fortunately there were some very funny bits that helped keep my attention.

About half-way through the book I seemed to get used to the writing style and, for want of a better word, relaxed into it. There is some really funny stuff here. I literally put down the first book and started on the second (The Light Fantastic). I have a horrible feeling I’m going to end up reading all 38 of the DiscWorld series…

Cheers

Tim…