I am Number 4…

I get the feeling that I am Number 4 is trying to target prepubescent boys, the same way Twilight (how I hate that film) has captured the imagination of every young person with ovaries. The big difference is that prepubescent boys like to see things get shot and blown up. As a result, it’s much more palatable to an adult male than the tripe they keep serving up in the Twilight Saga. Gosh that film is bad…

I.a.N.4 has its fair share of teenage angst and everyone is Hollywood pretty, but it didn’t make me vomit and it didn’t have glittering vampires. How I hate glittering vampires…

So if you go in cold, I.a.N.4 is kinda meh. If you cleanse your palate first by watching any Twilight (what a completely awful set of movies) film, you will think I.a.N.4 is awesome and deserves a giant bag of Oscars.

Cheers

Tim…

Academ’s Fury…

Academ’s Fury is the second book in the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher. The book starts two years on from where the Furies of Calderon ended.

I’m now totally invested in the characters. They are real to me. I’m already thinking I will miss them (as I do Harry Dresden) when I finish the series and there is another 4 books to go. If you like the first book you will love this. If not, then give it a miss.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database SQL Expert (1Z0-047) Notes…

About 7 months ago I wrote about sitting the Oracle Database SQL Expert (1Z0-047) exam. Since then I’ve been promising myself I’d write some articles about some of the sections tested by the exam. Lots of the content is pretty straight forward if you’ve been writing SQL for a few years. Also, there are lots of things that are covered in existing articles on the site.

I finally got round to writing a few posts about some of the exam content that isn’t covered, or is a bit “dispersed”, on my site.

OK, so the last one is not tested in the exam, but it should be. 🙂

With a bit of luck I’ll remember to link to these articles when people ask me questions in the future.

Cheers

Tim…

ORACLE-BASE on Facebook…

I’ve said numerous times I’m not a fan of Facebook, but in true “jumping on the bandwagon” style I’ve created an ORACLE-BASE.com Facebook Page. Big thanks for Jake from AppsLab for his post about the WPBook pluggin. It certainly saved me some time looking around.

Now all I need is 25 likes and I can get a proper URL for the page… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I have my 25 likes now, but feel free to continue adding them if you want to. 🙂

The Social Network…

I’m not really a fan of social network sites. I use them from time to time, but if they dropped of the face of the earth tomorrow it wouldn’t make much difference to my life. I have email addresses and phone number of everyone I want to talk to. Nuff said.

With that in mind I really didn’t give a crap about watching The Social Network when it was at the cinema. I was visiting friends last night and they both wanted to watch it, so I was forced into a corner. As it turned out it was a good film. If it had been about some company other than Facebook I would have enjoyed it even more. The film portrayal of the characters is as follows:

  • Mark Zuckerberg: A socially retarded, completely untrustworthy and annoying uber-geek thief. If he’s like this in real life I would definitely not want to meet him and putting a single penny in his pocket is bottom of my list of desires.
  • Sean Parker: A serial screw-up, style over substance, paranoid and incredibly annoying wannabe uber-geek. Once again, if he is like this in real life he’s not on my list of people I would like to meet.
  • Eduardo Saverin: An honest, if a little naive, guy who was surrounded by prize-winning sh*ts who were all out to screw him.

The fact the film is based on a book whose content is mostly drawn from interviews with Eduardo Saverin prior to the completion of his court case against Mark Zuckerberg suggests that maybe the view of the characters is “a little bit biased”. 🙂

Anyway, get it out on DVD and try to forget it is about Facebook and I think you will like it.

Cheers

Tim…