The Mechanic…

The Mechanic was an OK film. It didn’t have the style of The Transporter franchise, or the grittiness of the Bourne franchise, but it was obviously meant to appeal to that fan base.

I like Jason Statham in action films. He moves well and works angles really nicely. There wasn’t really any of that in this film. Kinda wasting his best feature in my opinion.

Ben Foster has carved himself a really good niche as an intense nutter. He does it really well and was one of the best things in the film. I was just watching the screen waiting for him to go pop. 🙂

All in all, not the worst visit to the cinema, but not really as good as I was hoping.

Cheers

Tim…

Do virtual keyboards promote weak passwords?

I’m quite big on password complexity. I like to use mixed case, numbers and special characters in my passwords.

Since having the iPad (and now the Android phone) I find it a real bind typing in strong passwords. The mixed case isn’t so bad, but I do have more login mistakes with the virtual keyboard. What really bugs me is having to switch keyboards two or three times to get all the special characters and numbers in. Every time I have to type a password on a mobile device I feel a certain tension…

My recent experience has left me thinking how nice it would be to have a weak password, preferably lower case letters only. So my next thought was, do virtual keyboards promote weak passwords?

Of course, I don’t expect anyone to comment and admit they have switched back to weak passwords, but it would be nice to know if anyone else feels my pain… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

REWORK…

A recent thread on the OakTable mailing list about company policies got me a little fired up. In reply to my extended rant Cary Millsap suggested I read REWORK.

Let me start by saying I’m not a fan of self-help books and I don’t consider myself a business person, so a book that looks like self-help for businesses just didn’t seem like a good fit. I have little-to-no ambition in terms of the business world or money. Having said that, I play in a world where ambition and money are central, so I figured I’d give it a go.

REWORK distills and debunks many of the myths associated with modern business. For anyone who has worked in the IT industry for a few years, the central messages are not new. You will have thought about a lot of these issues many times, probably while you were in a 3 hour meeting to discuss why you missed a deadline…

I guess I’m in agreement with about 95% of the suggestions in the book and even those I disagree with, I can see the point. If you are running a business, want to run a business, or just trying to understand why the company you work for is so messed up, you should read this book. It’s a bit like group therapy. It’s good to know you are not alone… 🙂

Big thanks to Cary for the suggestion. I have a couple of mates (who still have some ambition left) who will benefit from it more than me. I’ll be sure to pass it on.

Cheers

Tim…

Do you really care about your social network friends?

I read a post on Slashdot called Who Unfriended You, and Why. You’ve got to be one insecure puppy if you are concerned about this junk.

I went on to LinkedIn yesterday and approved loads of connection requests. Of those people, the only person I think I know is the guy who massages my back before I see the Osteopath. The rest are a complete mystery to me. I’m kinda similar on Mix, the Oracle Community and the Oracle Wiki. I link to anyone who requests. I think it was yesterday that I read something (can’t find link) about Facebook having the edge over Google in the future of searches because they know so much more about you. Really? If linking is a factor I think more is definitely less!

Facebook is the only social network where I actively control my linking. With a couple of exceptions, all my friends on Facebook are people I know in real life and would consider proper friends (current or past). I even exclude “proper friends” within the Oracle community because I’m linked to them in so many other ways it seems pointless to clutter my Facebook with them. If you send a friend request to me on Facebook you are likely to get ignored, so don’t be offended, it’s just the way I use that site.

So back to the point, my use of Facebook means that the links there have value right? Surely if these people are my “proper friends” I will share a lot in common with them and you will be able to target me based on them and vice versa. Recently my Facebook has contained the following topics:

  • Babies: Food and sleeping patterns of babies have been by far the biggest subject for a few months. I have no kids. FAIL.
  • Gay poetry with a radical political edge: One of my friends from University is now a gay poet who is apparently pretty good. Never read his work. Not my scene. My interest in politics goes about as far as pointing out how retarded most political decisions are. FAIL.
  • Hill running: Look at me. Do I look like I could walk up a hill, let alone run up one? FAIL.
  • Local football teams: Football is not really my thing. If my nephews didn’t play it I could happily forget it exists. FAIL.
  • DJ and clubbing stuff: A couple of my friends are DJs so there are often posts about and invites to local club nights. I don’t do clubs. FAIL.

What is not included in that list is anything computer or database related. Oh dear. The thing you could really target me on is the only thing missing from my Facebook because the majority of my proper friends are not IT people.

Given the complete random way some people build their networks and the random guff they talk about, I don’t really think Google should be quaking in their boots quite yet. A bigger problem for them is the number of people that never leave Facebook and therefore never see Google ads on the rest of the web, not the [lack of] quality of information Facebook holds about us.

Cheers

Tim…

Caveats: I realize there is more to online marketing than this, but it was just an illustration of how random social networks can be.

Where’s my money gone? (again)…

Followers of the blog will know before Christmas Oracle Norway randomly took a few thousand pounds off one my credit cards. The various accounting departments have been chasing their tails ever since and have only really proved they don’t know their arse from their elbow.

It’s now a month later and what do I see on my account but another payment to Oracle Norway. Sigh…

I’m on the phone now getting the transaction dealt with by the fraud department of the credit card company and getting the card cancelled. I guess I should have cancelled the card last time but I foolishly thought Oracle would be able to find out who and why my credit card was charged. It seems that is beyond their accounting system. Maybe Fusion Apps will allow you to track that information…

Cheers

Tim…

Gran Torino…

I can’t remember when or where I saw Gran Torino originally, but I remembered it being a great film. I was round a friends last night and I suggested we watch it. It really is a great piece of work. Some people have just got a gift and Clint Eastwood is one of them. I did a search through my blog today to see what my review said about it and I couldn’t find one. This leads me to believe I probably saw it on a plane and the review got lost in the confusion of the trip. Anyway, it’s a great film. Well worth checking it out.

The Dresden Files: Changes…

Oh my word. What an intense book. Jim Butcher threw just about everything at you with this one. I think Changes is probably my favorite of The Dresden Files series because it kinda brings everything together from all the other books. It feels very much like it should be the last book in the series, but there is definitely another on the way, so I guess we will see how that works out later in the year…

Cheers

Tim…

More iPad musings…

One of the reasons I bought an iPad was to use it as a book reader. I figured I could save a few trees and save a bit of money as some Kindle books are a little cheaper than the paper equivalents. Fast forward a few months and I’ve not completed a single book on the iPad. In fact I’ve struggled to read more than the odd page of any novel. The iPad just isn’t working out for me in that role. I find it a little heavy, the screen reflection is shocking and I’m not particularly happy about doing things like reading in the bath or in bed with it. It just doesn’t work for me. Added to that, a comment Gwen Shapira made at OOW 2010 has come back to haunt me. It’s just too easy to get distracted on an iPad. How wise you are Gwen. 🙂

I’m toying with the idea of buying a kindle. It would certainly solve the weight, screen reflection and distraction issues. Whether it would feel “natural” to me is another issue.

I had a bunch of gift tokens from the last couple of Christmases, so I went out a few days ago and bought real paper books. Instant satisfaction and I’ve started reading again… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

My whole website stolen again…

I got an alert from Google yesterday telling me some pages from my website had been stolen. This morning I had a quick look and I can see that actually my whole website has been ripped and published on someone else’s domain. The someone in question happens to be an independent Oracle contractor working in the European Union. I really don’t understand why in this day and age someone involved in our industry thinks they can do this without being noticed. As a contractor, gaining a reputation for copyright theft must be about the worst thing you can do. I can’t exactly see many employers welcoming you with open arms knowing you might steal from them.

I’ve sent a friendly notice asking the person in question to remove the stolen material. Let’s see how that works before I start any strong-arm stuff…

Cheers

Tim…

Update: The site has been removed so the matter is closed an the person’s name remains my secret. 🙂

Spam: The ups and downs…

Managing spam forum posts, blog comments and website comments drives me to distraction at times. Having said that it sometimes has its up side.

This morning, whilst clearing a bunch of spam posts and comments I threw my toys out of the pram and declared to everyone present (nobody was in the room with me) that I’m through with the internet and I’m turning everything off. Fast forward a few hours and a couple of new spam comments arrive, both of which were relevant to the threads they were posted on and almost seemed useful and mildly insightful. In fact, the only thing that distinguished them as spam was the posters URL. One was a dieting site and one was a heamaroid treatment. The latter made me giggle (yes, I am that puerile) so I will not divorce the internet quite yet.

Cheers

Tim…