Fedora 17 and Oracle 11gR2…

Fedora 17 was released yesterday. I mentioned in a previous post I had run through the installation of Oracle 11gR2 on Fedora 17 alpha. With the arrival of the final Fedora 17 release I ran through the articles again last night to make sure everything was OK. You can see the finished versions here:

As always, installing Oracle on Fedora 17 is just for fun and totally not supported. For anything proper you should be using Oracle Linux or RHEL.

Cheers

Tim…

MOS is driving me crazy…

Why oh why can’t the My Oracle Support (MOS) website actually work like it is meant to?

I have been trying to get set up to use the new companies CSIs and it is driving me crazy. I’m on the “Support IDs and Privileges” page and I either get:

  • No buttons.
  • Some buttons, but not the one I need to request access to the CSIs.
  • A request access button, that doesn’t work.

I get the same random (mis)behavior on the HTML and Flash versions. I checked with another guy in the office and his account is doing the same thing, so it’s not an issue specific to my account. I’ve also tried on IE, Chrome, Firefox and Opera. No luck.

Can we please ditch these versions and have the old APEX version back? It’s wasn’t as pretty, but at least it worked!

I rang Oracle Support to try and figure it out. The lady talked me through the whole process, asking me to click links or buttons that didn’t exist on my screen. It’s more than a little ironic that you need Oracle Support to actually use the MOS website…

So I am in MOS limbo. I can use my personal account and CSI, but who knows if I will ever get the company account working…

Cheers

Tim…

Free Book: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012

Michael McLaughlin‘s blog has a post about a free MS SQL Server book (Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012) available here. If you are into MS SQL Server, you can’t get a better deal than that. 🙂

Remember, you can still get hold of a free copy of Tom Kyte‘s book (Expert Oracle Database Architecture, 2nd Edition) from Red Gate.

Cheers

Tim…

Linux : HandBrake – Streaming DVDs from my NAS…

When my TV broke a few months ago I made the decision not to replace it. That means I only get to watch DVDs on the computer or stuff streamed on the web (BBC iPlayer, ITV Player or 4OD) using my iPad. I’m pretty happy with the situation as it prevents me wasting too much time in front of the TV. My only issue was being tied to the computer for DVDs. Yesterday I entered the 21st century and started streaming DVDs to my iPad.

A little Googling revealed HandBrake is about as simple as it gets, where DVD video transcoders on Linux are concerned. With that installed I saved a copy of a DVD (Alien) into the “movies” folder on my NAS, which is pre-configured for streaming videos. That’s nice and simple.

The next step was to get an iPad app to allow me to watch the streamed content. There are a bunch of them around, but I ended up with PlugPlayer. It automatically detected my NAS and worked immediately.

So now I can watch DVDs streamed to my iPad. All I need is a 60TB hard disk so I can store all my DVDs. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

 

60TB Disk Drives?

I was reading a story where Seagate were talking about 60TB disk drives. That’s all well and good, but how quick can I get data to and from them? If I need a certain number of spindles to get the performance I require, then I’m just going to end up with masses of wasted capacity.

I can picture the scene now. I have a database of “x” terabytes in size and I need “y” number of spindles to get the performance I require, so I end up having to buy disks amounting to “z” petabytes of space to meet my performance needs. Not only is it hard to justify, but you know the “spare” capacity will get used to store stuff that’s got nothing to do with my database.

Just think of those 60TB bad-boys in a RAID5 configuration. Shudder. 🙂

Feel free to insert a, “SSD/Flash will solve the worlds storage problems”, comment of your choice here. 🙂

Cheers

Tim….

Repairman Jack : Harbingers

Harbingers is the tenth book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.

The last of Jack’s relatives are gone. Are his girlfriend (Gia), her daughter (Vicky) and Jack’s unborn child the next in line? Is there anything Jack can do to protect them?

This book focuses more on Jack’s relationship to “The Otherness” and “The Ally”. We see a more aggressive side of Jack, as well as the cold calm detachment when he’s doing his job. Dark, dark, dark, but also kinda exciting.

Cheers

Tim…

 

 

Repairman Jack : Infernal…

Infernal is the ninth book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.

Another family tragedy has the effect of reuniting Jack with his brother Tom, the judge. It turns out Tom is not as squeaky clean has he appears and needs Jack’s help for something less than legal. As you can probably guess by now, it all turns sinister and mystical… 🙂

I’ve definitely become desensitized to the darkness now. Every time a new character is introduced, pretty much my first thought is, “I wonder how they will die?” It’s a bit like watching Star Trek and knowing the security officer (in the red top) you’ve never seen before is the one that’s going to eat lead/laser…

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit 3.1 for Mac and Linux…

I’ve been using the beta versions of UltraEdit 3.1 for Mac and Linux for a while, but I only noticed today the production version has been released. I normally get email  updates, so I figure this one must have got directed to spam by accident. 🙁

Anyway, I’m now rockin’ the latest version on both platforms. Happy days…

Cheers

Tim…

Job Interview…

I went for a job interview today… (pause while Debra Lilley picks herself off the floor)

It’s probably been about 8 years since I’ve had a formal interview like this. I admit I was a little nervous going in, but it turned out to be pretty good fun.

It started with a 1 hour written exam. It’s been about 20 years since I’ve written more than a signature with a pen, so having to write with a pen for 1 hour was pretty terrifying. I’m not big on remembering syntax (that’s what the manuals are for :)), but hopefully I showed that I understood what was going on. Some of the questions could have been answered with “Read this: oracle-base.com/articles/….”. Pity that wasn’t an option. 🙂

After the written exam came a regular interview. I like interviews. I like talking to people about technical stuff, so I had a good time. I hope they did too. Nobody fell asleep and I didn’t see any ears bleeding, so I guess I didn’t bore them too much. I get quite “enthusiastic” when I’m talking about technology. I guess that can be a little daunting to some people. I hope I didn’t scare anybody off. 🙂

I guess it’s now down to them to decide if I’m a good fit for the job or if one of the other candidates will fit in better. Time will tell.

It would be really neat to get the job, but I’m lucky in so much as if I don’t get it, it will not really impact on my life, so I’m not tense about the outcome. Whatever will be, will be.

Cheers

Tim…