A few more 12c articles

A few more 12c articles went live over the last few days…

The DMU and In-Database Archiving are from the OCP syllabus. The Invisible Columns stuff seemed like a natural thing to mention, when discussing the In-Database Archiving.

The 12c journey continues…

Cheers

Tim…

 

OTN APAC Tour 2014

As well as losing the ACED OpenWorld confirmation email, it turns out my website/mailbox move also caused me to lose the email about being accepted on the OTN APAC Tour 2014. I saw a tweet this morning saying that I was on the agenda for the NZOUG event and checked with Francisco to see what was going on. That’s when I found out that yet another important email had gone missing… 🙂

The good news is I had already agreed the time off work, so everything is good for the tour.

  • Perth, Australia : November 6-7
  • Shanghai, China : November 9
  • Tokyo, Japan : November 11-13
  • Beijing, China : November 14-15
  • Bangkok, Thailand : November 17
  • Auckland, New Zealand : November 19-21

After the OTN Yathra Tour 2014, which was 7 cities in 14 days, I told myself I was too old to do all this tour stuff… So much for that idea… 🙂

Although it’s a 6 event tour, the first and last events are pretty much like being at home for me. I’ve been to the AUSOUG and NZOUG events a few times, so it will be good to meet up with everyone again… It will be my second time in Beijing, and I’ve seen the traffic in India now, so I’m hoping I will cope better with the roads in China this time. 🙂 Shanghai, Tokyo and Bangkok are all new to me, so it will be interesting to see how I cope with them…

As always before one of these tours, I am a complete mix of excitement, fear and general panic! 🙂

I look forward to seeing you all there!

Cheers

Tim…

The Expendables 3

It’s a holiday weekend and I just got back from watching The Expendables 3.

OK. You don’t go to a film like this expecting an Oscar winning script, but come on! During the end credits, when it said “Story by Sylvester Stallone”, I thought of a scene from Boogie Nights where they discus the plot of an adult movie about 30 seconds before they start to shoot, which goes something like this…

“Enter Reed to audition for Amber. They go at it.

Dirk enters. Meets with Becky. They go at it.”

In the case of The Expendables 3, the same sort of thing must have happened, but something like this…

“Sylvestor enters the room. He shoots sh*t up..

Terry Crews enters. Sees the bad guys. Shoots sh*t up.”

It’s also worth remembering that physics works completely different in The Expendables 3 world… 🙂

That aside, it’s a good laugh. I’m not really sure how they can sustain the series, because really this is just a rehash of the previous two. Actually, you could probably just rearrange the fight scenes from these three films to create “new” films every year for a while. That way you wouldn’t even had to waste time filming…

Antonio Banderas, who was described by a lady behind me as, “… so damn sexy!”, played the only character that had any sort of back-story, but I always think of that cat from Shrek when I hear his voice… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge : Keeping It In The Family

If you watched my (No) Ice Bucket Challenge yesterday, you will know I nominated my Oracle family.

The first family member to step up to the plate was the daughter, Heli “Hell-Squirrel” Helskyaho. She shared the video on Facebook, which you can see here if you are a friend. We have to be careful with the parental controls to keep her safe!

Next up was the wife, Debra Lilley, who used the opportunity to do an Oscar acceptance speech.

That left only my dad, Graham Wood. This really is a case of saving the best for last. Thanks Dad for proving you really are the daddy! When I grow up I want to be just like you…

Thanks to the whole family for getting involved. It’s enough to bring a tear to your eye! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Please don’t forget to donate!

Lucy

I’ve had a day off today, so as well as swimming, starting to clear out my junk room and going to the pub to say “see ya” to a colleague who is going on maternity leave, I went to see Lucy.

Let me start by saying this is pretty much a rip-off of Akira. Not in a word-for-word copy sense, but it’s like Luc Besson watched Akira and said, “How and I take most of the main points, while trying to make it seem like I’ve written something new, but still steal a bunch of the visuals?” He then went to sleep, woke up and wrote Lucy.

Plagiarism (or derivative work) gripe aside, I really enjoyed it. I watch Akira on a regular basis, so the fact this film has a similar message is pretty neat. Scarlett Johansson doesn’t really do it for me, but she is OK in this role. It’s nice to see strong female characters kicking off. There are a few scenes that should have been modified in my opinion. I think Luc Besson disappeared up his own ass a couple of times, but on the whole it was pretty darn cool.

Added to that, they kept the time down to a pleasant 89 mins.

Cheers

Tim…

Altering Hosting Service : The Gift That Keeps Giving

I moved my website to a new dedicated server about 3 weeks ago. As well as the usual DNS nonsense, I found out today that a whole load of emails have been blocked…

I have a mailbox at the hosting company to handle all my email. That all gets sucked into Gmail. That’s the way it has been for ages and life has been good. Since I made the move, the “new” mailbox looked like it was working fine, but I hadn’t noticed the spam filtering was turned on to a really high level and it was blocking loads of good emails. As a result, a lot of really important emails were gathering in the spam folder of my mailbox at the hosting company, something I never check.

I’ve now turned off the spam filtering on that mailbox, so it all gets sucked into Gmail and that handles my spam, the way it always did…

I’ve been working through the emails this evening, but it is highly likely some have fallen by the wayside, so if you were trying to send me something important over the last few weeks and I’ve not replied, it’s possible I’ve not actually received it. 🙁

This all came to light because people were talking about the ACED OpenWorld emails, which I hadn’t got. 🙁 Thanks to some emails from Debra and Doug (who was mostly at the pub) and some Twitter DM-ing from Vikki, I got the information, registered for OpenWorld and booked my hotel. The deadline was tomorrow. Phew! 🙂 Just got to sort the flights now….

Cheers

Tim…

 

LinkedIn Anniversary Messages

Thank you to everyone who has sent congratulations messages via LinkedIn, but I think LinkedIn might have mislead you somewhat… 🙂

When I left a previous job I switched my LinkedIn profile to say I was employed by ORACLE-BASE.com. That was in August 2008. I’ve never changed it since then, so now it says I’ve been “employed” by ORACLE-BASE.com for 6 years, hence the “anniversary”…

I bought my first domain and started putting articles on the net in July 2000. In August 2001 I renamed the site to oracle-base.com, so depending on how you look at it, the site is a little over 14 years old, or 13 with the current name…

So to everyone that has sent me a message congratulating me on my 6th anniversary, thinking that’s how long the website has existed, I would just like to point out is it the 14 year anniversary. 🙂

For those that think I’m employed by oracle-base.com, I’d just like to point out I’m not. I’ve got a regular job and I do the website for fun in my spare time. That’s why when you write to me asking for a job at oracle-base.com, I always say no. It’s not a company. It doesn’t employ anyone, not even me! 🙂

Anyway, sorry if LinkedIn has confused you, but thanks for the messages of support anyway. It’s very kind!

Cheers

Tim…

Multitenant : PDB CONTAINERS Clause

I forgot to mention, I put another multitenant article live at the weekend.

I’m not sure I will ever use it, but it’s good to know it’s there.

I was originally working on an article on a completely different multitenant feature, but the examples I was using highlighted a bug, which kind-of scuppered that article. I’ve raised an SR and I’m waiting on the acknowledgement and possible fix. I’ll hold that article back until the fix is in place.

Cheers

Tim…

Just Don’t Call It Science!

I’ve had two rather frustrating conversations recently with people who have claimed “science” and “proof” where it is totally inappropriate. One was regarding a 3000 year old religious text. The other was a bunch of medical-related blog posts. In both cases, the people were making very valid points and thought they were backing up their stance with “scientific proof”. The problem was, by inappropriately playing the science card, they made themselves and their beliefs sound stupid. Like I said, in both cases they were making very valid points, but their supporting arguments were just plain dumb!

I really do feel most people out there do not have a clue what science and scientific methods actually are. Just to bring this closer to home, I would just like to make this point. Please read this next line and the following explanation before you feel the need to comment…

I don’t think there is an Oracle blogger that I follow that is writing blog posts worthy of being called “science”.

That comment is not meant to shock and offend. I’m not trying to sound elitist, because I certainly rate much lower on the science scale than many other bloggers. The point of that comment is to put things into perspective. The scientific approach to gathering, validating and presenting information is a very formal affair. If you’ve experienced a research-based (not taught) Masters or PhD you will have just scratched the surface of what I’m talking about. If you’ve not experienced science to at least that level, I’m not sure you are really in a position to judge the extent of what people mean when they say “scientific proof”.

At this point I think the audience response will be split amongst these types of reaction.

  • People who saw the word “religious” in the second sentence, instantly jumped to a conclusion about what this post is about and either stopped reading or started to prepare their counter argument.
  • People who have a “favourite blogger” who *they believe* to have a super-scientific approach to Oracle and are desperate to tell me so.
  • People who follow “popular science” and believe the watered down crap they present in those articles and documentaries resembles real science and therefore think they know about science and think I’m talking crap.
  • People who just don’t give a damn and will happily call what they read in blog posts and wikipedia science, regardless of source, scientific approach etc.
  • People who understand what I’m talking about and realise we all just producing useful and informative content, but are not living up to the rigorous standards that would be required to call our tests and content “science” or “scientific proof”.

I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion, educated or not, but what I find it really hard to tolerate is when people start playing the science card where it is not appropriate. Do that and I’m gonna call bullshit every time!

Cheers

Tim… (Not a “Computer Scientist”, “Data Scientist”, “Software Engineer”, “Data Architect” or any of those other bullshit titles that offend the professions they reference)