Month: November 2007

30 Days of Night…

All I can say is what a shame! 30 Days of Night had such promise, but it washed it all down the toilet.

You can see lots of ideas from other films thrown into the mix. It’s in Alaska, so the darkness and snow is reminicent of The Thing. A place locked in darkness for a month allowing the baddies to be set free for that time is very much like Pitch Black I guess. The sreaming of the vampires was totally Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There are some more comparisons, but it would give the story away so I won’t do a spoiler.

The vampires themselves were cool. Proper ugly villians, not the usual hollywood vampires. The trouble was, there were just so many flaws. The vampires were incredibly fast and strong, but if one of the lead character wanted to run away from them, they just kind of walked and screamed a bit. Give me a break.

The ending was so infuriatingly trash it… Oh forget it!

I should have gone to see Saw 4 instead. At least you know you’re going to get a crappy gore-fest, rather than thinking you might get something reasonable and being disappointed.

Cheers

Tim…

SQL Performance Analyzer…

In addition to my reading exploits, I also had a trot through the SQL Performance Analyzer last night. It all looks pretty neat.

When I was using Database Replay I didn’t feel like the Enterprise Manager screens were easier to use than the PL/SQL APIs. They didn’t exactly feel like they added any value I guess. Part of that may have been because you still had to jump out to the command line to start the replay clients. Perhaps I was just being a bit fussy…

In contrast, I felt the SQL Performance Analyzer was a little bit easier to use through Enterprise Manager. That’s not to say the APIs are difficult, just that the Enterprise Manager screens add a little value. The basic running is the same, but the Enterprise Manager screen includes a couple of quick tests for optimizer version and parameter changes which are quite handy.

To be fare, the biggest difference in terms of ease of use is the creation and manipulation of the SQL tuning sets, which feels much simpler in Enterprise Manager, although some of functionality was present in 10g also, so I guess it’s a bit unfair to throw it into the mix. 🙂

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…