2018 : A Year in Review

What a strange year this has been for me from a technology perspective!

The Good

Lots of good things have happened over the year.

  • I did presentations at 15 separate tech events, as well as a talk to students at a local university. I do some talks at work too, but you can’t really count that. Even though I had some drama at some of the conferences, the presentations went well for the most part.
  • I was one of a group of people named as an “Oracle Code One Star” at Oracle Code One 2018, based on the speaker evaluations from last year’s Java One conference.
  • I got a Lifetime Achievement Award at UKOUG Tech18. This sounds a bit like being put out to pasture, but it’s just another speaker award based on the speaker evaluations from UKOUG Tech 17. You can only win three awards, so your third is called a lifetime achievement award, and you aren’t allowed in the race in following years.
  • I wrote over 150 blog posts, which averages at about one every 2.5 days. That sounds like a lot, considering I feel like I’ve not had much time to write this year.
  • I wrote over 90 articles for the website, which is more than one every 4 days. That also sounds like a lot. I just checked and in the last 18.5 years I’ve averaged more than one article a week. Crazy.
  • I’ve been putting a bunch of stuff on GitHub. It’s all stuff I’m messing with, as opposed to “real projects”, but it feels nice.

The Bad and the Ugly

Followers of the blog know this has been a tough year for me, because I keep moaning about it in posts like this.

When I’m travelling I pretty much write a daily diary on the blog, which reads like, “Which country did Tim puke in today?” I can’t have another year like this year.

Work has been hard this year, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. I feel like I’m trapped in an abusive relationship with work. There are some big projects happening over the coming year and cruising is not an option. I’m not really sure how I’m going to cope. Time will tell I guess.

Next Year

Not resolutions as such, but some things I am thinking about for next year.

  • I’ve got to sort out my crappy lifestyle a bit. I’ve let everything just go to wrack and ruin this year and it shows both mentally and physically. I’m convinced it’s a big factor in the way this year has gone. I’m not going to make any rash promises, because I know me, but if I can just tune in again things might get better.
  • I’ve turned down a few conferences already for 2019. I will still be doing some, but I’m not sure how many. My confidence has hit rock-bottom and I just need something to dig me out of this funk. I tried to muscle through it this year, and it’s caused more harm than good.
  • It would be nice to do some YouTube videos again. I keep meaning to, but similar to the conference presentations, I’ve lost my mojo. I have no goals as far as numbers are concerned, but it would be nice to think this time next year I can say I’ve done some. At the moment, I’m enjoying putting together Fortnite game play videos for nephew #2 and nephew #1 has started to use my GoPro to record his downhill mountain biking, so I’ve done the first of what might be many of those for him.
  • As far as the website goes, it’s more of the same. Having some time over Christmas has allowed me to do some more learning and writing and I just feel more positive about things. It feels like getting back to my roots.
  • Work? It’s the classic case of you can work hard, or you can work long, but you can’t do both. Like a number of other people the days are getting longer and longer, but the backlog is not getting any shorter. I’ve just got to push the keyboard away and leave. It will all be there in the morning and I’ll be in a better position to deal with it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Cheers

Tim…

It’s not my job to do your job for you!

I’m currently drowning in a sea of requests for a number of things, including people wanting me to help them with specific issues, which feels a bit like they want me to do their job for them. I feel a little bit uncharitable saying that, but that’s how it feels.

Let me start by saying I understand what it’s like to be asked to do stuff in your job that you don’t know anything about, and also don’t care about. Sometimes, if you can Google a solution and move on it’s a happy day. Having said that, I’m also aware that I can’t expect every article and blog post I come across to contain exactly what I’m looking for. You have to do a certain amount of digging, mixing & matching and it involves a certain amount of trial and error to get to a solution.

Here’s an example I’ve had recently. I’m not saying this was a case of “do my job for me”. The person in question was very polite and not at all demanding, so I feel safe to use this example, and I’m hopefully not going to offend them.

The interaction started with a question about XMLTABLE. It became clear over time this was actually several points wrapped into one.

  • Basic usage of XMLTABLE, explained here.
  • Usage of XMLTABLE with a variable, rather than from querying a table, explained here.
  • Populating a variable (presumably an XMLTYPE) with XML from a URL, explained here.
  • Dealing with network ACLs, which was mentioned in the previous link, but explained more fully here.
  • Making HTTPS calls from the database, explained here.

All these pieces were already explained on the website, but there wasn’t one page that put them all together. As a result of that question I added a bunch of extra links between articles to make the situation a little more obvious.

People contact you and from their perspective it’s a one-to-one interaction, but from your perspective it’s a one-to-many, as they are not the only person requesting your time. You end up feeling guilty you can’t help more, and I’m sure some of them think you are being a dick because you are not helping them. This situation just doesn’t scale.

It’s almost impossible for anyone to be an expert these days. You have to mix & match information to get to a solution. If you want a job in IT, you have to develop this ability to find information from several sources and combine it to get to a final solution. If you are expecting someone else to do that for you, you are never going to get anywhere.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. In my response to a comment below, I am reminded of some words from Tom Kyte who said, “The more you do, the more people want you to do!” ๐Ÿ™‚

Visibility vs Results

If you speak to my colleagues you will know one of my regular topics of conversation at meetings is the “judgement of worth” within the company. I get quite annoyed when I see people who I believe are adding value, but always seem to get ignored, while others who talk a great talk, but ultimately can’t walk the walk, seem to catch all the breaks. It seems visibility is more important than getting results these days.

One of my colleagues sent me a link to this article and it really sums up what I keep saying.

I’ve spent the last 18 years telling the internet what I think, so I couldn’t deny a tendency for self-promotion, but I like to think I can actually deliver, not just talk about it! Of course, you will never really know unless you work with me, and that’s the point. It certainly seems people believe what they are told, regardless of whether there is any factual basis to it.

So what should you do? Well in my opinion, maybe this is a start.

  1. Actually learn your subject in the first place. I hope your aim isn’t to be one of these creeps. I hope your aim is to continuously improve and deserve any good breaks you get.
  2. Learn to speak about your subject in a clear, concise and professional manner. Don’t sit there silently, then blame the world for being unfair. The world is unfair! Deal with it! Make a positive change! If you need some pointers, I’ve written some public speaking tips here.
  3. Learn to write in a clear, concise and professional manner. If you write unintelligible emails, people are going to assume you are dumb. I happen to think blogging is a good way to improve your writing skills. I’ve written some pointers about blogging here. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how you get there, but you must be able to make yourself understood.
  4. Don’t let other people take the credit for what you do. I’m not suggesting you write an email to the CEO every time you deploy an application, but by the same token, don’t let someone else stand up and take the credit you deserve, especially if it’s because you are too scared to actually stand up and speak for yourself, and instead rely on others to present your work.
  5. For the bosses out there, try to start judging people by actual results, rather than by what they say they can/have done.

I realise I sound kind-of narky in this post, but I think it’s really important. It really gets on my nerves when I see people taking the credit for other people’s work, and I’m equally annoyed when I see other people letting it happen.

I’m not suggesting you bully the perpetrators, or make a big show of the situation. Just don’t give them the opportunity to steal your moment in the sun!

Good luck folks!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. The wife said something in a Facebook comment that reminded me of something I wanted to say. I regularly get accused of name dropping, because I say things like, “I was chatting with X, and they said…”. This isn’t me trying to brag about all the “famous” people I know. It’s because I don’t want to come over as having these ideas for myself. I’m going to name-check people, even if you think it makes me look like I’m bragging, because they deserve the credit for their work and their ideas. If they tell me the origin of their idea, I’ll say, “I spoke to X, who said they heard Y say…”. Sorry if this annoys you personally, or you want to make a negative judgement about why I do it, but I think it matters…

WordPress 5.0.2

I posted a few days ago about the release of WordPress 5.0. As I said at the time, you can always expect a rash of new updates after a major release and this is the second maintenance release since then. There’s no drama, as these maintenance releases are applied automatically, so by the time you read this, you will probably already have it. The point of this post is to remind you to check for the other updates that aren’t automatic.

Since the release of version 5.0 I’ve had a lot of updates to plugins and some theme updates. The 5.0.2 release has come with another bunch of theme updates too. None of the plugin and theme updates happen automatically, so if you are self-hosting, remember to check the updates to these components. Running old versions of plugins and themes can present a security risk, as well as leading to unexpected behaviour of your site.

Happy upgrading. ๐Ÿ™‚

Cheers

Tim…

VirtualBox 6.0

VirtualBox 6.0.0 has been released.

The downloads and changelog are in the usual places.

Iโ€™ve installed it on my Windows 10 laptop at work, which I use with Vagrant for testing of Oracle, WebLogic, Tomcat server builds, as well as Docker builds. Iโ€™ll do my personal Windows 10 laptop, old MBP and OL7 server when I get home. 

Update:

  • Windows 10 : The install went fine on my home Windows 10 machine. One slight hiccup on my work laptop. The installation went fine, then chucked out a bunch of errors. Once I rebooted it behaved fine. I think this is because we have a company build of Windows 10. I’ve hit a few snags in the past that haven’t been repeatable on Windows 10 at home.
  • macOS Mojave : No worries. I even tried it on an old machine running El Capitan and it was fine there too.
  • Oracle Linux 7 : I couldn’t install straight over the top of the previous version (5.2.22) as it produced conflicts, so I did a “yum remove” of that, then a “yum install” of the new package and it worked fine.

It’s also worth noting I kicked off a few new builds using Vagrant (2.2.2) and they went fine with the new version of VirtualBox.

Anyway, so far, so good.

As always, it’s a new product out of the door. I expect some frequent releases until it settles out, and if you’ve got something that really matters, like you are doing some demos tomorrow, I would probably hang back for a while. ๐Ÿ™‚

Cheers

Timโ€ฆU

WordPress 5.0

Especially if you are self-hosting WordPress, you might have noticed that WordPress 5.0 has been born.

I’m not a WordPress aficionado, so I don’t really pay much attention to most of the WordPress new features, but something you can’t avoid is the new editor. It’s completely different.

The new editor has been available for some time for the previous WordPress version as the “Gutenburg Plugin”. The dashboard has been encouraging you to try it for ages.ย Once you get to WordPress 5.0 you can switch back to the original editor using the “Classic Editor” plugin, that will allegedly be supported until 2021.

What are/were my my first impressions? I previously tried the Gutenberg plugin and pretty much hated it, and switched back right away. ๐Ÿ™‚ Now it is the main editor I’m going to try and stick with it.

I think the first thing that might freak you out is the idea of blocks. At first it seems really odd, as it implied to me I’ve got to add a new block every time I want a new paragraph. Not so! You just type and it figures out the block thing out for you. Type “return” and you start a new block. I think I’m probably guilty of over-thinking a lot of this stuff, rather than going with the flow and just seeing what happens.

I find it interesting how in some aspects of my life I’m quick to embrace change, like in the Oracle world, but in other parts of my life changes cause me problems. I think it probably comes down to what I’m interested in. I’m just not interested in blogging tools. I’m interested in blogging itself.

I’m also acutely aware that I often resist change, then a couple of weeks down the line I can barely remember a time before the change. I’m pretty sure that will be the case here. Today it took me a few minutes to figure out how to put that WordPress logo in the top-left of this post, whereas previously it took a second. I think it’s actually easier now and more WYSIWYG than it was before, but when it’s different, it feels wrong. ๐Ÿ™‚

So that’s it. Give it a go and see what you think!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I expect a whole bunch of updates to come in the next few weeks as they discover all the bugs and security holes they’ve put into the new version. ๐Ÿ™‚

UKOUG Tech18 : Day 3

The first session of the day for me was Alex Nuijten with “and from the chaos comes the perfect APEX application”. This session was focused on the organisation and structure of APEX applications. You could describe it as #SmartDB or #HardShell I guess. The emphasis was on a functional API layer, with APEX used as a skin over that API layer. I share this opinion, but Alex takes it further than me, and in a more structured manner. He was having some problems with the screen blinking, but he’s a pro and took it in his stride. ๐Ÿ™‚

Next up was Amy Simpson-Grange with “Robotic Process Automation”. This was Amy’s first technical presentation, but you would never know it. There were some problems with the screen at the start of the session, and I’m sure she was freaking out inside, but she shrugged it off and did a great job switching between laptops. I’ve not really been involved in this type of automation before, so it was a learning experience for me, with a few light-bulb moments along the way. The content was great and the delivery was so relaxed and natural. I really hope she keeps on doing tech conferences in future!

After that I followed some of the analytic folks into a session by Abi Giles-Haigh called, “Open Source & Oracle Complementing not Competing”, which was focused on the AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning space. I freely admit to being clueless about this area, and Brendan seemed surprised to see me there. ๐Ÿ™‚ I was kind-of expecting to be totally lost, but Abi did a good job of making it noob-friendly for me, as well as giving the pros something to bicker over. ๐Ÿ™‚

Continuing the theme of watching stuff I knew nothing about, I went to Lonneke Dikmans presenting an “Introduction to Blockchain for Developers”. Over the years I’ve gained my first insights into the worlds of SOA, microservices and then serverless from Lonneke, and here I am learning about blockchain at one of her sessions. I wonder what next year will bring. ๐Ÿ™‚

Next up in the same room was Roel Hartman with “Docker for Database Developers”. I’ve seen a number of Docker presentations for DBAs and developers, including my own, and they all bring something different to the table that make you think. I guess so much depends on your area of interest and the use cases you have in mind, as that will direct your attention. A hardcore DBA will see things differently to a developer, and a generalist like me will probably sit somewhere between the two. ๐Ÿ™‚ It’s good to see things from a few angles, as it gives you a more rounded perspective.

From there I tagged along with Dawn and met up with a few folks at a local hotel bar for a quick drink before heading off to get the train home.ย I got a table on the train, but disappointingly there was no wifi, so I had to write this blog post in a text editor, to post later. ๐Ÿ™‚

Me looking pretty in Machu Picchu, Peru, wearing a Chile hat. Photo taken by Debra Lilley a few minutes before I was hospitalised. ๐Ÿ™‚

So that’s the last conference of the year for me! Thanks to everyone at UKOUG for making the event happen and inviting me to speak. Thanks to the attendees and speakers who came along and made the event what it is. Thanks also to all last year’s attendees who filled in the speaker evaluations, that resulted in me getting the “Prettiest Speaker Ever” award this year! To this year’s attendees, please fill out the evaluations. It gives UKOUG feedback that helps with speaker selection in future, and it’s a nice pat on the back for the speakers if they get a prize. Finally, thanks to the Oracle ACE Program and the Oracle Groundbreaker Ambassadors for letting me continue to fly the flag.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Previous posts in this series.

UKOUG Tech18 : Day 2

Day 2 started at 07:00. I hadn’t slept that great, so when the alarm went off I was thinking it would have been nice to stay in bed a little longer…

I got to the conference venue at about 08:00 and went straight to the “Women in IT – What has Changed?” session. Debra Lilley introduced the session and the speakers, then it was on to Daya Haines Haddockย and Amy Simpson-Grange telling their stories and speaking about their experiences and inspiration. Both were super-positive people and really inspirational. It was great to hear Amy is involved at the grass roots level at schools and colleges, spreading positive messages, letting people know they can be themselves and still succeed. The overriding message of the session was “Be brave. Be yourself. Take on challenges!” A good lesson for everyone.

I kind-of got lost for a while, chatting and catching up on the blog.

The next session I went to see was “Identifying Performance Problems in a Multitenant Environment” by Christian Antognini. It’s good to hear his thoughts on his approach and he pointed out a couple of things I had missed in the docs, so I’ve got them on my list to check out. ๐Ÿ™‚

Pretty soon it was time for my session called DBA Does Docker. It’s a real struggle to get this done in 45 minutes and I failed again. ๐Ÿ™‚ Nobody was following on from me, so I didn’t ruin the next speakers life. I hope people found it useful.

I spent some time chatting to Pete Finniganย about life, the universe and everything. That was followed by his session calledย “User Rights & Least Privilege”. I would like to say my systems don’t suffer from loads of the stuff he mentioned, but… It’s always good to go to Pete’s sessions and remind myself I need to try harder…

After that it was Jeff Smith with “Oracle SQL Developer – Everything you Need to know About Tuning”. Not surprisingly, this was a tour of the features available in SQL Developer that relate to performance tuning. There’s a lot in there these days! ๐Ÿ™‚

After Jeff’s session I bumped intoย Amy Simpson-Grangeย and had a total fanboy moment over her talk in the morning.

I went to my hotel to drop off my bag, then went back to the venue for the social event. Carbs! I chatted to a bunch of people, who kind-of provided counselling for me. Thanks folks! Then it was back to the hotel to crash.

Cheers

Tim…

UKOUG Tech18 : Day 1

Day 1 started at 05:00. Normally I start trips with a 30 minute taxi ride to the airport, leaving about 2.5 hours before the flight. Today I left the house 30 minutes before my train was due to depart. Not needing that 2 hour buffer makes a big difference.

I had upgraded to first class, a whopping ยฃ10 extra, to get a set with a table and wifi. The wifi was a little slow and it restricted a whole bunch of sites, but I was still able to do some stuff. I got an Uber from the station to the venue. The driver was playing The Prodigy and Nirvana. Awesome.

On exiting the taxi I tweaked my back. I tried to put my coat into my case and noticed it was locked, and I couldn’t remember the combination. What a surprise. I’m at a conference and things are going wrong… ๐Ÿ™‚

The first session of the day for me was “Using Vagrant to Build, Test & Debug Ansible Scripts Easily” byย Martin Bach. Followers of the blog know I’m a meddler with Vagrant and I’m an Ansible wannabe.ย  Martin was extolling the virtues of reliable and repeatable builds, which I’m all for. ๐Ÿ™‚

Next up was the keynote, which started with Martin Widlake doing the introduction to the event, and announcing the speaker awards based on last years evaluations.

Big shout out to all the winners in all the categories.

This year I picked up my third UKOUG speaker award, which means you are given the “Lifetime Achievement Award” and you are not included in “the race” in future years. I join an illustrious list of people who’ve been told to “get out and don’t come back!” ๐Ÿ™‚

Later on I had to pick up my award and get a photo opportunity. Thanks to everyone who filled in the speaker evaluations last year. It always surprises me when this type of thing happens, especially when I think how far I’ve come over the last 10 years of presenting. I still consider myself a “nervous speaker” and I watch other people present and think I’ve still got a lot to learn about presenting.

Next up was theย “Exadata – Roundtable Discussion with Development” hosted byย Gurmeet Goindi. I don’t work on Exadata, but I like to keep my ear to the ground, and get invited to a meetup later of course. ๐Ÿ™‚

After that I got lost in a whole bunch of conversations with a variety of people. I could lose a day doing this.

The next session I went to was “How Autonomous is the Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse?” byย Christian Antogniniย and Dani Schnider. I have to admit I was a little distracted during this talk because I was logged into work looking at some stuff. I spoke to Christian later to fill in the gaps a little.

From there I went to a panel session about the ACE program. Unfortunately it had been put in the wrong track, in a room the other side of the building, and up against a load of really good speakers who were going to soak up the audience (Maria). The audience was compact and bijou. ๐Ÿ™‚

From there I went back to the hotel to drop off my stuff, then it was off for a brief visit to the Exadata meetup, followed by the ACE dinner.

Looking back it was a really random day, but I got to speak to a lot of people, which is the best thing about conferences for me. ๐Ÿ™‚

Cheers

Tim…