Category: Random

I’ve just deleted a couple of anonymous comments and prevented anonymous posting. I’m not totally happy about it because it seems like censorship, but I’m not going to sit in the middle and let people use my sites as a forum to slag off others.

Nuff said!

On a lighter note, I’m going to see Underworld – Evolution tonight and tomorrow I’ve got a Christmas Party. It’s one that I couldn’t fit in before Christmas 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

So yesterday, just after posting Why do I publish on the web?, I decided to change the way my website was hosted. As a result, the site was unavailable for somewhere between 1 and 24 hours, depending on DNS propagation. So I guess the post should have been called, “Why I don’t publish on the web!”

Historically the site was written in ASP and MS Access. Quite some time ago I rewrote it in PHP and mySQL, but I never moved it off the existing server, so all of that was running on Windows 2000, and later Windows 2003. Recently, a collegue started a site with the same hosting company and I noticed his was much more responsive. Turns out he was using a Linux host, rather than a Windows one. Yesterday I switched to Linux and guess what? Everything is much quicker. All the dynamic content, like the forum and the ratings system, is miles faster.

Yet another success story for Linux 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Reading a post by Doug Burns that referred to multiple comments about fragmentation of the Oracle community made me think about my own motives for publishing material.

My site (oracle-base.com) started many years ago as a means of collating information for me to use. As a freelance DBA/Developer, it was easier to keep information on a website than carry it from company to company on floppies or CDs. How-To articles allowed me to quickly remember how features worked if I hadn’t used them for a while. In addition, these articles allowed me to answer common questions with one URL, rather than repeating the same conversation or email. It all started as a means of making my life easier.

The site started to get a bit more popular when I wrote some Oracle 9i OCP DBA upgrade notes and put them on the site. I did the beta exam so there were no upgrade exam guides available. Since I had to write my own notes anyway, putting them on the site was no effort. The process for the 10g OCP upgrade was similar.

On occasion I write specific articles to answer questions, but for the most part I write about whatever I’m currently doing. So it’s still very much a site for me. The fact that others find the site useful is nice for my ego, but not essential for its existence.

Regarding the community fragmentation issue, I don’t see this as a problem. I agree with Eddie Awad’s view in Dougs comments:

I believe that the Internet is not a Pizza pie, it is an open and vast medium, only the useful and the reliable will surface in this medium, the rest will sink into the black whole of the web.

Q: So why do I publish on the web?
A: I do it for me. If others like it that’s fine. If the don’t they should go elsewhere.

Q: Should other people of varying abilities publish on the net?
A: Too right they should! If I think it’s rubbish I won’t read it. If it’s good I will.

Q: Does it matter if they make their mistakes in public?
A: If they can live with it I can 🙂

Q: Is this bad for the community?
A: I’m sure there will be occasional bum-steers, but for the most part it won’t matter too much. We’ve all given bad advice on more than one occasion, and we all will again. Does this mean we should stop? I don’t think so.

Q: Is there anymore to say on this matter?
A: I’m sure there is, but I’m a little bored now 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

The time has come to clean up my act. I’ve got loads of domains and loads of email addresses and it’s a complete waste of time and money, so I’m going to ditch the lot. As a result, I’m starting the arduous task of changing my email address. If anyone has my former email address and they want the new one, contact me on the old address and I’ll send it through.

Cheers

Tim…

I mentioned in my previous post that I had bought a NSLU2 network storage solution. It’s a Linux appliance, but it only supports samba, not NFS. When using it from Windows it worked fine, but mounting it from Linux left me with loads of permission issues, to the point where I could only really use it as the root user. After surfing on the net is seemed that this was pretty standard. Then I found the Unslung project, which changed everything.

Unslung is another version of the NSLU2 firmware, that allows you to install additional packages. I downloaded Upslug2, used it to flash my NSLU2 with Unslung-5.5, ran the unsling command and added NFS and OpenSSH support.

Now I have a NSLU2 running both samba and NFS. What’s more, I have SSH access so I can interact with Linux on the appliance directly, making it much easier to work with.

If you’re using Windows, chances are you won’t need to do this, but for Linux users I think this is a really good move.

Now I am really happy with my NSLU2, and all my storage is secure. I guess that means I can get back to Oracle for a while 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I have no problem using vi or gedit, but it’s really handy to edit remote files directly, rather than constantly FTPing files around.

When I’m working on Windows I tend to use UltraEdit as my main text editor, but I use Windows less and less these days, so I’m starting to use jEdit much more. It’s multi-platform, it’s open source and it has loads of plugins, including an FTP plugin to allow editing of remote files.

Just thought I’d mention it 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I have one XP machine that I use for remote access to work. I need to use Windows on it as the VPN software I have to use is Windows only. Yesterday the Windows installation died and it doesn’t want to be repaired. The disk is fine, it’s just the crappy OS that is moaning. How I loath Microsoft products sometimes.

I’ve managed to install the VPN software on a Windows virtual machine on my CentOS box, the previous version wouldn’t allow this for some reason, so I have remote access again, but no need for a dedicated Windows machine. All is well with the world!

Cheers

Tim…

Friday Night – I went to a Christmas party with my Yoga mates. One of the guys got his car clamped and had to pay £94 to get the clamp removed.

Saturday Night – Work Christmas party. I got my car locked in a car park overnight. I didn’t get a parking ticket, but it cost me £22 in taxi fares.

The moral of this story is, Christmas is not designed for sober people 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Two more Christmas parties next weekend…