Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer.

Estonia Day 2 Update…

I’ve just finished the second day of teaching in Estonia…

I didn’t have any database issues today, which was a relief. Everything went according to plan, but it was a struggle to get all the information across in the time. I think I’ve got more than 13 hours of material and only 12 hours to present it in, but I can’t really see what I can remove without missing out something important.

As it was, I managed to get through everything, but I did need and extra 45 minutes. 🙂

I enjoy doing these 2 day sessions, but they are extremely draining. Anyone who knows me will find this hard to believe, but it’s really hard work to talk for 12+ hours in 2 days. I’m not sure I could cope with teaching a 5 day course, or teaching every week. I take my hat off to anyone who is a full time trainer, because it’s a very difficult job…

So now I’ve got a couple of days sightseeing before I head home. I had a quick walk round the city last night and it looks really cool. The weather is great and the days are so long it’s unreal.

I think I’m going to head off to the hotel gym to do some yoga, the go and have another look round the city before I start my proper sightseeing tomorrow.

Cheers

Tim…

Estonia Day 1 Update…

I’ve just completed day 1 of my PL/SQL workshop in Estonia. The first few minutes proved especially eventful!

When I did my workshop in Copenhagen, I had a lot of trouble with the projector. This morning I plugged the projector into my laptop and all was well. I even made a joke about how well it was going. Little did I know…

I started the presentation and the first demo hung! I don’t think I can fully describe the panic that sets in when something like that happens withing a couple of minutes of starting a 2 day workshop. It’s like a little piece of you dies. 🙂 I did a little messing around to try and get it working, but quickly realised I had to keep things going or it was going to get really boring, really quickly, so I just rebooted the virtual machine.

Lookily, wiser men than me (Andrew Clarke and Mark Rittman) had warned me long ago about the dangers of live demos, so I always carry a backup plan. I had text representations and screen shots of the expected output from the demos, so I used those while I waited for the VM to restart. After a little while the VM was up again and was working fine, so with more than a small sigh of relief, things were back on track.

I wonder what fate will throw at me tomorrow. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, or gives you a heart attack…

You gotta laugh…

Cheers

Tim…

Website and PC cleanup…

Website

Two colleagues mentioned my website was looking a bit messy on the same day. The main culprit being the left-hand toolbar, which had loads of links and search tools. When you live with something for so long it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees, but when I took an objective look I had to admit it was in a bit of a state. As a result, I spent the weekend having a bit of a cleanup.

I simplified the navigation and everything except the homepage is clutter free. I figured, when you click on an article you’re there to read it, not stare at loads of navigation and search widgets.

I think the basic layout will stay like this for a while, but I’ve not decided on colour scheme or the shape of the tabs and borders. It might stay like this. It might change. Whatever I decide, I want it to be very clean and simple.

PC Cleanup

At the same time, I fancied a bit of a cleanup of my main PC at home. I do almost everything on virtual machines, so I can use any OS that has a browser and can run VMware Server.

I’ve been using CentOS 5 for ages, and although it’s a stable server OS, it’s a long way behind Fedora and Ubuntu in terms of desktop features. I think I’ve made my feelings about Fedora clear, so I decided to give Ubuntu 8.0.4 a go.

I’ve been playing round with Ubuntu virtual machines for a while (since version 6 I think), but I’ve never run it as a host operating system, so I was expecting a few problems. Fortunately, everything worked out of the box. As soon as VMware Server was installed I could start all the VMs on my NAS and life was good.

It’s only been a couple of days, but I’m starting to think once all my talks and conferences are out of the way I’ll switch my laptop to Ubuntu also. I just need time to check the demos and presentations work. I’m in Estonia next week so I don’t think now is the time to start messing about.

Ubuntu ships with a beta of FireFox 3. I wrote a brief post about FF3 a while ago. Having used it for a while I decided to load the RC1 version on my Vista (yuk) laptop and it’s working fine. I’ve read some press reports about bugs, but I’ve not come across any problems yet. There’s talk of an RC2 version, but hopefully the final release will be soon.

Cheers

Tim…

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

When I was watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I got the distinct feeling I was watching a ripoff of The Mummy Returns, which is kinda funny since the mummy franchise was a ripoff of the Indiana Jones franchise. The original Indiana Jones films had some pretty extended and outlandish action sequences, but the mummy franchise just multipled everything up. It seems this film used the same approach. I suppose it’s naive to think it can recapture the magic of the originals now I’m old and jaded. 🙂

The story was a little lacklustre, but that’s OK because not many people go to this type of film expecting much of a story. There are a couple of sequences I recognized from other films, but for the most part it is just a rehash of the previous films.

I thought it was a pretty fun film. If you can forgive the obvious failings, you’re going to have a really good time watching it.

As I walked out of the cinema I saw a massive display advertising the new film in the mummy franchise. I expect that will be one 3 hour long action sequence. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Spelling and written English…

[Written with alternative spellings intentionally]

I saw on the news today that 1 in 3 peeple in England have problems with spelling. One of the commentators sujested we shud follow Portugal’s egsample, who have resently proposed changes to simplify and consolidate Portuguese.

I think a revamp of the English langwage is well overdue. Silent letters and multiple spellings of individual fonetic sounds are just plane stupid. Added to that, we have some variations in spelling between English speeking nashons.

It’s ezee to be preshus about “our heritage”, but if English was a new invenshon, I’m sure many wud be quick to identify all the problems.

If there is ever a vote for a spelling simplificashon I will be in favor of it.

[/Written with alternative spellings intentionally]

Cheers

Tim…

Outpost

Outpost is a reasonable film. Better than I expected, but not totally amazing. The cast is mostly British, with plenty of TV actors, but they do a reasonable job (if you can ignore a couple of dodgy accents). The story is ok, and there are a few genuinely tense moments.

If you are bored and you’ve already seen Iron Man and Doomsday, then give this a shot. Not as good as Dog Soldiers. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 9 and Oracle 11g…

I wrote a couple of articles against a beta version of Fedora 9 before I went on holiday. I did a run through against the final release of Fedora 9 today and they seem fine, so here they are:

The installation process doesn’t give you the option to turn off SELinux or the firewall. You can do it after the installation, so it’s just a small annoyance, but I don’t like it.

If you want to know my opinions on the distribution itself, read my post on Fedora 8. It’s six months later and there is still no visible sign of a direction for this distribution. I don’t think my opinion has changed.

Cheers

Tim…

Back from holiday…

Just got back from holiday.

Sorry to all those people waiting for answers to their mails, blog comments and forum posts. I’m starting on the process of catching up, but it’s going to take some time. 🙂

I’m taking the brutal approach to catching up. If the subject of an email or blog post doesn’t jump out at me, I’m deleting it. I’m sure I’m going to miss out on some good stuff, but I’ve got to catch up quick. There is too much going on and not enough time. 🙂

I decided to gave a total period of being offline. No email, not twitter, nothing. It’s kinda nice to be a technology free zone for a while. You forget how much of your day is filled up with deleting irrelevant blog posts… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

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