10 Cloverfield Lane

I just got back from watching 10 Cloverfield Lane. The trailers don’t really give much away, but don’t watch them anyway, just in case. Also, don’t read any reviews with spoilers before seeing it. I think it will still work if you know the story, but why ruin it?

Wow! What a movie! Wow!

The story is great. The acting is great. John Goodman is great. I didn’t really know what the story was before going in. I had just seen the trailer embedded above.

I’m so glad I went to see this film! I don’t want to say anything more for fear of ruining it for someone…

Cheers

Tim…

Deadpool

Yesterday I went to a late showing of Deadpool. If you haven’t seen the trailers already, don’t watch them as they give too much away!

I’ve been wanting to see it for a while, but I can’t get my cinema mojo back. The last thing I went to see was the new Star Wars film. I used to really love going to the cinema, but these days I really don’t like it. Even when I enjoy the film, I find the process rather irritating.

The opening credits were funny and totally irreverent. They really set the mood for the whole film.

Probably the hardest thing about introducing a “new character” to the audience (let’s forget the X-Men Origins: Wolverine stuff, since this film has) is you have to go through the backstory, which is typically pretty boring. Deadpool also had to do the boring stuff, but at least it does it in a more interesting way. Switching between backstory and “current time” crazy action is probably the best way to get it done.

The Deadpool character is very different to every other super hero. He breaks the fourth wall (talks to the audience), which is especially interesting when the characters around him seem confused, like they don’t understand who he is talking to. Added to this he self-references, is edgier and funnier than most super heroes. Also, the content is significantly more adult than any of the X-Men films that came before it.

I guess the bit I liked the least was how they gave him his mutant powers. I preferred the idea they used in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I thought the method they used in this film seemed kind-of lame.

Overall, I’m glad I went to see it. I just wish I hadn’t seen the trailers as they give away a lot of the good stuff, which I think would have been more epic and funny if I hadn’t already seen it.

Honourable mentions go out to the two female mutant characters (Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Angel Dust) who were awesome. I would have liked to see more of them in the film.

Cheers

Tim…

Video : XMLTABLE : Convert XML into Rows and Columns using SQL

Here’s an Easter present for everyone out there. 🙂

If you are not a fan of videos, you can read the article it’s based on here.

The cameo in this video is Mike Hichwa of APEX fame, along with a rather rowdy bunch who try to muscle into the video. See the outtakes at the end.

Cheers

Tim…

WebLogic Stuff

glasses-272399_1280-smallI’ve written a bunch of stuff about WebLogic over the last few years, but it’s kind-of scattered throughout the site. When I was gearing up for my session at the Middleware SIG recently I figured it was about time I collected it all together, so I added a new WebLogic page to the site. It’s on the menu and the quick links.

Much the same as the SQL and PL/SQL pages, it really is just a bunch of links to other stuff. I tend to put my articles in version-specific locations, because it suits me, but I realise it’s not ideal for everyone. I think this gives me the best of both worlds.

I’m always a little nervous about bringing attention to articles on certain subjects on my website. If you’ve seen me present, you’ll know I’m quick to point out I’m not “the WebLogic guy”. It’s something I’m involved in, but I would never dream of making out I’m the man. If WebLogic is your thing, there are better people to follow than me!

Having said that, the website has always been me writing about the stuff I’m doing, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. If it helps you, that’s great. If not, I’m sorry, but there are lots of other websites to read. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Google as a Cloud Provider?

cloudI saw a tweet this morning that pointed me to this article.

Google To Challenge Amazon, Microsoft In Cloud Computing War

 

This comes hot on the heels of this article.

Google dumps ISP email support. Virgin Media takes ball, stomps home

I use a lot of Google services and I like them. Having said that, I just can’t bring myself to take their Google Cloud Platform seriously. It’s not that I don’t believe they have the capability to do cloud. The are Google after all. 🙂 It’s more about trusting their services will exist in the future. If they are happy to dump 4.6 million email customers in one shot, why should I believe they give a crap about my IaaS stuff?

This kind of behaviour is not new from Google. They have taken an axe to many services before, but this seems so much more dramatic and significant from a company that is pushing their public cloud agenda.

Now it all comes down to money, and I guess Google couldn’t make enough off the this ISP email customer, but it is still a worrying signal. People should always have an exit strategy for every cloud project, but with Google it seems like it should be a bigger priority.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Maybe I’m not. I just feel unnerved.

Cheers

Tim…

Video : The MERGE Statement

After a what seems like an eternity of being ill and having a dodgy throat, followed quickly by a couple of conferences, I’ve finally got back on the horse and recorded another video.

I was explaining a specific aspect of the MERGE statement to one of my colleagues and while I was doing it I was thinking, “Have I done a video on MERGE yet?” Now I have.

The cameo for this video is Cary Millsap. If you watch the out-takes at the end you will see the level of respect and trust I have garnered in the community. The words confused and suspicious spring to mind! 🙂

An honourable mention goes out to James Morle for videobombing. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Midlands : Event #14 – Summary

Last night was Oracle Midlands Even #14 with Lothar Flatz.

The session started with “Raiders of the Data Dictionary I: Indexing for the Workload” where Lothar discussed a project he worked on based around completely revamping the indexing of a system. I guess the best way I can describe it is to say it’s a more scientific approach to indexing, using the contents of the dictionary to provide information about columns and column groups used in queries to determine the indexes to create. In some ways the approach was quite extreme (throw everything away and start again), but I also admire the bravery of that approach!

Next up was “Raiders of the Data Dictionary II: The Curse of the Buffer Cache” where Lothar discussed the problems associated with trying to keep large, frequently used tables in the buffer cache. Once again, some interesting points made and some things that will definitely influence my approach in future.

It was great to meet Lothar in person for the first time. After being in the game for 20+ years many subjects can start to feel a little repetitive, so it’s nice when someone comes along with a different spin on a subject. I certainly found myself asking a lot of questions of him and myself, which surely must be what this knowledge spreading thing is all about!

Thanks to Lothar for taking the time to come and speak to us and to everyone that came along to listen. Thanks to Mike for doing a great job in keeping Oracle Midlands going and to Red Stack Tech for their continued support.

See you at the next one! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

UKOUG Application Server & Middleware SIG – Summary

ukougOn Thursday I did a presentation at the UKOUG Application Server & Middleware SIG.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was not able to stay for the whole day. I arrived about 30 minutes before my session was scheduled to start. The previous session finished about 10 minutes early and the speaker following me cancelled, so my 45 minute session extended to about 70 minutes. 🙂

 

There had already been speakers focussing on Oracle Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS), so I did a live demo of Azure, which included building an Oracle Linux VM and doing an install of WebLogic and ADF. There was also a more general presentation about running Oracle products on the cloud. I’m not a WebLogic or cloud specialist, so this presentation is based on me talking about my experiences of those two areas. Peter Berry from Clckwrk and Paul Bainbridge from Fujitsu corrected me on a couple of things, which was cool.

After my session I hung around for a quick chat, but I had to rush back to work to do an upgrade, which went OK. 🙂

Thanks to the organisers for inviting me and thanks to everyone that came along. It would have been good to see the other presentations, but unfortunately that was not possible for me this time!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Simon, the preinstall packages were installed in the Oracle Linux templates. 🙂

# rpm -qa | grep preinstall
oracle-rdbms-server-12cR1-preinstall-1.0-8.el6.x86_64
oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall-1.0-7.el6.x86_64
#