Jean Claude Van Damme : Volvo

One of my friends posted me a link to this great video.

I’m a big Jean Claude Van Damme fan and have been since I first saw him in No Retreat, No Surrender. I was at a mates house and I didn’t have access to a couple of Volvo trucks, so I had to use a couch for my response.

splits

 

How geeky are we? It was a Friday evening and we were watching TED talks, as you can see on the TV behind me. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTNYathra 2014 : India OTN Tour

Just a quick note to say the top-level approval for OTNYathra 2014 – India OTN Tour has been granted. Next, we’ve got to submit our individual travel approvals and see how that goes. If everything goes to plan, I will be representing the Oracle ACE Program on this tour in February, which visits the following locations.

  • Jalandhar – 18th February
  • Noida – 20th February
  • Mumbai – 22nd February
  • Pune – 23rd February
  • Hyderabad – 25th February
  • Bangalore – 27th February
  • Chennai – 1st March

Fingers crossed everything goes to plan. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Locked Forums

Just a quick note to say I’ve had to temporarily lock my forums. As happens every so often, the spammers are hitting it pretty hard at the moment. I’m a bit sick of spending every waking minute deleting hundreds of spam posts, so I’m giving myself a break for a while. During previous episodes, after a couple of days of no joy it’s died down, so hopefully it won’t last too long this time either…

Cheers

Tim…

Update: It’s late and I’m tired. I just remembered I can prevent new registrations, so I’ve unlocked the forums, but stopped all new registrations. That way, existing members can carry on as normal… 🙂

Oracle Midlands : Event #1

Mike McKay-Dirden recently wrote to me asking if I would speak at a new event he’s trying to establish called Oracle Midlands. You can read his thoughts about it on the about page. It’s similar to the types of things the Pythian guys do with the local meetups.

The first event is on January 7th in Birmingham, with myself and Pete Finnigan speaking. It’s a free event, which is being sponsored by those kind people at Red Gate Software.

The success or failure of this sort of thing is totally down to the level of participation by the attendees, so get signing up if you want to be part of it! Also, if you come along and chat to Mike, you can help shape future events…

Cheers

Tim…

MobaXterm 6.6

I’ve sung the praises of MobaXterm many times. Just a quick note to say version 6.6 came out a few days ago. The download and change log are here.

If you are using a desktop PC running windows, but spend your life connecting UNIX and Linux servers, like most DBAs and sys admins, you really need this in your life! It’s so much better than anything I’ve ever used before. Even those really expensive desktop X emulators (you know who you are)! What’s more, it’s a self contained .exe, so no need for installation. Just unzip and go. Perfect on a memory stick!

Cheers

Tim…

Untogether Lives

A little over a year ago, I wrote a review of a book called Girl 99 by Andrew P. Jones. I got an email from the author a few days ago to say his latest book, Untogether Lives, was released on Kindle, so I downloaded it straight away. Here’s what it’s all about.

Untogether Lives is a collection of fourteen stories that peek through the curtains of an eclectic cast, struggling to keep mind, body and the world around them together. From an amputee shoe thief, to an unlikely arsonist, to a sexually frustrated quadriplegic.

Predominantly dark and occasionally disturbing, these stories are not for the faint-hearted, but neither are they without humour. Not everyone in Untogether Lives gets a happy ending, and not everyone survives – but, hey, that’s life for you.

I loved it! It seems strange saying that when the subject matter is so dark, but it’s true. The writing style works really well for me. The content is very different to what I normally read, but it was good being taken out of my comfort zone. What really amazes me is the amount of connection I felt to some of the characters, even in the shorter stories. Despite the darkness, there is humour in there too. This book is definitely not for the sensitive souls out there, but I think it is a great collection of stories. I’m looking forward to the next book from the author!

Cheers

Tim…

Thor: The Dark World

I’ve just got back from watching Thor: The Dark World.

Unlike lots of people, I actually liked the first Thor film. I also liked the character in The Avengers, so I went into the movie with high hopes. Some parts of this film are totally awesome. Some parts are a little bit boring. Some parts are like a low budget DR Who episode.

The dark elves were really cool, a bit spooky and dead tough when they were on every other planet, but put them in London and they just run around looking like dodgy extras in a Power Rangers episode. A few minutes earlier they were shooting everyone with super laser stick things and killing Gods. Now all they can do is chase people? Seriously?

 did the bad guy really well. I’m a bit bored of Loki now. He’s too predictable. I still think Thor is cool.  as Heimdall is a great character. Pity they can’t make more of his part. Everyone else is pretty well disposable from my position. I find ‘s character pretty annoying. Apart from a couple of scenes where she looked completely evil, she was a bit of a non-entity.

I think I’m going to like this film a lot more when I’m watching it on TV, so I can check my emails during the dull bits. I couldn’t get a signal in the cinema, so I was forced to watch them. 🙁

Cheers

Tim…

 

 

 

KeePass 2.24 Released

Just a quick note to say that KeePass 2.24 has been released. The downloads are here and the changelog is here.

I’ve written about my use of KeePass here.

I use the Portable KeePass version, so I just unzip it over the old version and we are good to go!

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Remember, if you are planning to use KeePass on Mac, make sure you have the latest version of X11 and Mono (3.2.3 or later).