Belgrade, Serbia: PL/SQL Masterclass – Day 1

I’ve just completed day 1 of the PL/SQL Masterclass for Oracle University in Belgrade. So far so good…

Last night Ljiljana took me on an evening tour of the city. I got to see a little of New Belgrade, which is very modern with wide streets, big buildings and some shopping malls, as well as some of Old Belgrade, which has narrower streets, regular shops and mostly smaller buildings . There are few big blocks there with a “communist feel” to them (her words not mine). What was quite freaky is some of the military/government builds that were bombed during the NATO bombings in the late 90’s are still not repaired. The amount of building that has happened in the last few years leads me to believe these may be left that way for a reason… I’m not big on commenting about politics, but it is very interesting hearing stories about that time from regular folks who were living here at the time. Always two sides to every story etc.

Unfortunately the timing of my visit is such that I can only really see the city by night, so I’ve not taken any photos yet. I think I’m going to Google some and pretend I saw it all by daylight. 🙂

After the tour and some shopping we went out to a small traditional Serbian restaurant near Ljiljana’s parents house. Serbians are very big meat eaters, but they also have some really cool veggie dishes. I had lots of stuff I can’t spell or pronounce. Lots of cheese and a dish made out of butter beans, peppers and onions that was awesome. I’m hoping to get the recipe from Ljiljana’s mom so I can try and make it at home. It’s quite similar to the food I’ve had in Bulgaria, which suits me just fine. 🙂

I didn’t sleep too well last night. I think I was still a little stressed out about the luggage situation. I did manage to buy some clothes and stuff yesterday so today wasn’t too bad, but you still feel a little off center. I got back to the hotel tonight and my luggage has arrived. Now I’ve got no excuse for looking scruffy tomorrow… Doh!

Let’s see what tomorrow brings. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Belgrade, Serbia: Day -1

I usually wake up far too early before a trip, then spend ages waiting for a taxi. Today I was lying in the bath when the taxi came. This happened to me once before when I fell asleep in the bath. Today I didn’t fall asleep, but the time just disappeared. Maybe I was abducted by aliens for 30 minutes. I heard a knock on the door and panic ensued…

As I get older I enjoy taxi rides more and more. Taxi drivers are notorious for moaning and now when I get in a taxi I feel totally in my element. I can just moan and bitch about life, the Universe and everything. Throw in a couple of, “They’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes”, and my morning is complete. 🙂

Today’s flight is via Paris, which for some reason means I go from the domestic terminal in Birmingham. I guess if nothing else it gives me a change of scenery. I’ve seen far too much of the international terminal recently. I have one hour to change in Paris and I don’t have my boarding pass for the second leg yet. I don’t think I’ve ever been through CDG before, so I’m not sure if this is a reasonable amount of time to transfer or not. Time will tell.

Update 1: I’m going through the Paris transfer now. The Air France guys are telling me to go to the boarding gate without a boarding pass. You can’t get to the terminal without a boarding pass, but I have to get to the terminal to have my boarding pass printed. Hmrgh… As much as I hate the world perception of the English, acting like an bumbling idiot (Hue Grant style) does help at times like this. If you look clueless long enough their superiority complex kicks in and they help you out of sympathy. While they are smugly congratulating themselves on how thick the English are I’m mentally putting my little finger to the corner of my mouth and saying “Muhahaha” in a DR Evil style. 🙂

Update 2: There was a little drama at the boarding gate. The Jat Airways people told me I needed to go back to the transfer desk and get a boarding pass. I told them what the Air France guys had said and slipped seamlessly into the stupid English man act for the second time today. Problem solved. Muhahaha… 🙂

Update 3: I’m now in Belgrade, but my bag isn’t. I’ve got everything I need to teach tomorrow, except clean clothes. Nothing makes a first impression like that stale aeroplane and airport smell. Nice… I’m going to see if I can pick up a couple of things tonight without hitting my credit cards too hard. I have no idea what proces are like over here.

Cheers

Tim…

The Law of Logical Argument…

I received a mail today containing a list of laws (in the scientific sense), all of which were silly observations just for amusement, but this one stood out.

“The Law of Logical Argument – Anything is possible if you don’t know what you are talking about.”

Although not directly relevant, that got me thinking… I answer a lot of questions on forums and one of the things that strikes me time and again is people find it really difficult to define and communicate their problem. In some cases there’s a language barrier to contend with, but most of the time it comes down to a basic lack of thought by the poster. How many times have you spent days following a forum thread only to find the question you were answering was not the question the original poster “thought” they had asked? This is not just a feature of forum posts, but also in every day interactions. People will spend hours skating around issues, but never formally outline what the issue is. In many cases, the process of clearly defining the issue actually allows them to answer the question for themselves, or at least highlights a possible path of investigation.

Unless you can clearly define a problem, there is no way you can communicate it to anyone else. What’s more, unless you have an understanding of your problem, you can’t judge the value of answers, making you susceptible to suggested voodoo solutions.

Over the years I’ve had the good fortune of interacting with a lot of people I consider Uber Geeks, but what continually strikes me is the simplicity of their approach to solving problems. They may sometimes look like they are making leaps, but that’s just because experience allows them to do the steps quickly in their heads, rather than have to draft it out on paper, but most of the time they are following a fairly simple recipe to solve the problem, the first stage of which is actually defining the problem itself.

Is it surprising that database performance tuning is still considered by many to be some form of black magic? Not at all, because it is one of those areas that requires thought, reason and a meticulous approach.

Enough ranting for today. I’m off to run a database on a single 1TB disk and wonder why my I/O throughput is so bad. Must need a faster CPU. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Someone on Twitter recently linked to an article called The Lost Tools of Learning. It’s quite long an a bit heavy at times, but some of the points it makes tie in with this post and I think it’s worth a read.

Skyline…

Just got back from watching Skyline. I read some reviews before I went, most of which said it was terrible and something to avoid at all cost. With that message firmly embedded in my brain I went with zero positive expectations and quite enjoyed it.

Most of the reviews said the acting was really bad. It wasn’t wonderful, but it certainly wasn’t Twilight bad. The reviews said it lacked plot. Well yeah, but Cloverfield and District 9 weren’t exactly brimming with plot and they were cool. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not heaping praise on this film, it’s certainly a B movie, but it’s by no means the worst film I’ve ever seen. It beats the hell out of any Twilight movie, but then so does a blank screen. 🙂

The film wears its influences very much on its sleeve. A lot of the visuals look like they were stolen heavily inspired by The Matrix and Independence Day (I really hate that film). There is a District 9 and Cloverfield feel to the film, with some of the visuals kinda stolen inspired by Cloverfield too, along with a bit of War of the Worlds for good measure.

One of the most interesting things about the film is it allegedly cost less than $10 Million to make. That’s like one episode of Friends (final season). I think the visuals are pretty sweet for that price. It also means it might make enough money, even with half empty cinemas, for a sequel to happen, which they definitely want judging by the ham-fisted hook into a sequel at the end. If one happens I will go to see it just out of curiosity.

So go expecting the worst and it won’t be quite as bad as you expected, possibly… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

SnagIt on Mac…

I wrote recently about UltraEdit coming to Mac. Another tool I ‘ve missed since my Windows days is Snagit. The default screen capture on Mac is OK, and Shutter and Gimp on Linux are both OK too, but none of them compare to Snagit in my opinion.

Today I got an email proclaiming that a production release of Snagit is now available for Mac and since I have a valid Windows License I get to use it for free on Mac. Joy.

It’s now installed and running quite nicely. Now if only they would do a Linux version… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 14 on my desktop…

I wrote a post a few days ago about Fedora 14. Over the weekend I could resist no longer and switched to Fedora 14 as my desktop OS. Prior to this I had been using CentOS 5 for ages.

Now remember, I do almost everything in VMs, so all my Oracle stuff is still on OEL5 x86-64. This is just the desktop I use to run VirtualBox and a browser.

So far so good. The installation went fine and VirtualBox is behaving it self OK, so all my VMs are running with no problems. For the most part it all feels very similar to CentOS 5, but because all the underlying pieces are up to date I get to run a few extra things, like Chrome as my browser, Shutter for image capture and a newer version of Gimp.

I think Ubuntu is a more natural desktop than Fedora, but I’ve been using Red Hat versions of Linux for years, so I just feel a little happier on them. Fingers crossed this will work out OK.

Cheers

Tim…

The Losers, Salt and The A-Team…

I haven’t got the the cinema much recently, but having been on a lot of planes, I got a chance to catch up on a few films I missed at the cinema.

The Losers – A pretty good action flick. There’s some cheese and a liberal dose of action cliche, but all in all a very enjoyable film. While I was waching it I couldn’t help thinking this is what The Expendables should have been like.

Salt – It’s an OK sort-of film. Not astoundingly good, but not astoundingly bad either. I wasn’t digging Angelina Jolie as a blonde, but then I guess she probably wouldn’t like the look of me either. 🙂

The A-Team – I remember seeing the opeing credits, and I think I may have seen the final credits, but I can’t remember a thing about the film. I’m guessing I slept through it. Not sure if the sleep was caused by the quality of the film or the long flight. 🙂

I must admit that I watched the last scene of The Last Airbender about 5 times. I love it when Aang does his thing, the tottoos on his head start to glow and he raises a huge wall of water. I could consider buying the DVD just for this scene. I must by the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Cheers

Tim…