Oracle related rants (and lots of off-topic stuff)…
It’s the night before the first day of my Oracle PL/SQL Tuning workshop in Vienna. The flights were on time and pretty straight forward. I had a two hour stay at Dusseldorf airport, which was quite pleasant.
I’ve not seen much of Austria yet, but I can say it has a fantastic infrastructure. Everything looks so solid and well constructed. I’m looking forward to seeing a bit more over the next few days…
Cheers
Tim…
A little over a year ago I wrote a rather miserable post about the departure of one of my friends for New Zealand. Thanks to the wonders of Skype we’ve managed to keep in touch, despite the time difference.
This morning he called to say he was now a father, so I would like to take a moment to formally welcome Ruby Lukic to the universe…
I have been applying some pressure during conversations about names. I was suggesting “Tim” if it was a boy, or “Tim” if it was a girl, but it seems my suggestions have been ignored. Although the middle name is still undecided, so there’s hope… 🙂
I can’t wait to get down to New Zealand later in the year…
Cheers
Tim…
I’ve just released an article covering the Miscellaneous New Features section of the OCP upgrade exam. It contains a rather random assortment of stuff including:
I was toying with the idea of putting each section out as separate articles, but they’re all pretty small soundbites, so I thought I would be better to stick with grouping in the OCP syllabus.
Cheers
Tim…
I went to see Jumper last night. I was a little disappointed because I thought it was a film about knitting… 🙂
I read some reviews saying it was shocking, so I had suitably low expectations, which meant I was pleasantly surprised. It was quite fun. If you like the idea of jump through worm-holes at will and thought Nightcrawler from X2 was cool, you are going to like this. If you think it’s a load of fanciful nonsense then you’ll hate it.
As noted in his previous outings, Hayden Christensen is a bit wooden. Jamie Bell was OK, but he had a few lines which I can only assume were English because I couldn’t understand them. Samuel L. Jackson is great as always. Even when he’s bad he’s good. 🙂
Expect nothing and you’ll enjoy it. Expect something special and you’ll walk out dissapointed.
Cheers
Tim…
Work:
A little over 2 years ago the company I work for was taken over and since then I’ve been trying to decide if there is a place for me in the new organization. In the back of my mind I knew there wasn’t, but the path of least resistance is so tempting. 🙂 Yesterday I was forced to make a decision, and I will be leaving in August. That means I will be unemployed when I’m at OpenWorld this year, so if you seem me throw me a couple of coppers for a cup of tea… 🙂
I don’t have any plans for what comes next, and to be honest I have no intention of making any until the end of the year.
Distractions:
I’ve not done a great deal of writing for the website recently. One of the reasons is I’ve been writing and rehearsing a 2 day PL/SQL tuning workshop that I’m presenting in Austria and Denmark soon. It’s been an interesting process, but it has taken quite a bit of time. Rehearsing a 12 hour workshop takes a big chunk out of what little spare time I have. 12 hours to be precise. 🙂
Another big distraction is Web 2.0. I think it’s safe to say I’ve been seduced by all things Web 2.0, which means I’m spending much of my spare time doing rather random, but fun, stuff.
Over time these distractions will fall by the way and I’ll get back to writing more. If nothing else, I must sort out the 11gR1 new features before 11gR2 is launched… 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Here’s a little something about Automatic SQL Tuning in Oracle 11g. No DBAs necessary in 11g… 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
I’ve been having a play with Firefox 3 Beta 3 and I must say it is blisteringly quick! The difference between Firefox 2.x and 3 is quite dramatic. It doesn’t currently support any of the plugins I use on a daily basis, so I’ll have to revert to the stable version, but I’m looking forward final release…
Cheers
Tim…
After a few days off with an annoying cold, I’m back in action. I’ve got a Karate course this weekend and I’m not really feeling up for it, but I have to go or I’m not allowed to go to any others for the rest of the year. If you miss selection the year is totaled! 🙁 I’m going to use the wonder drug that is Lemsip to get me through it. 🙂
I added SnapShots to my blog and my aggregator. I like having the preview, rather than having to click on every link to see what it’s pointing to. They are configurable so if they annoy you you can switch them off. I guess most people read this blog via the RSS feed, so it won’t make a difference anyway.
I’ve been messing about with loads of Web 2.0 stuff recently, but today I’ve actually done some tidying up. I closed my StumbleUpon and MySpace accounts. I’ve not used StumbleUpon for ages and now it’s grown into another social network site it seemed pointless keeping it. I’ve never used my MySpace account, so closing it is no big deal.
Cheers
Tim…
It’s been another 2 film weekend for me…
In the Valley of Elah – Don’t get caught up in whether this is a propaganda film about the war in Iraq. In my opinion it isn’t. It’s a story about a father trying to find his missing son. That’s not to say the film avoids the subject of war and the armed forces. On the contrary, the film deals with the impact war has on soldiers, but this theme is not specific to any one war or any one country. The subject matter means it’s quite a tough film to watch, but it’s well worth seeing. Just don’t expect to come out with a smile on your face.
Cloverfield – WOW! This film is totally awesome! I completely loved it. Imagine a documentary of a disaster in New York done in the style of The Blair Witch Project. Of course, if you couldn’t stand the camera work of Blair Witch you’re going to hate this too, but for me it added an extra sense of drama and realism to the whole thing. I know I always complain about camera shake, but here it’s totally appropriate rather than feeling contrived. There were enough monster shots to get me into it, but it wasn’t overdone like normal Hollywood monster movies.
On the way out I heard many people saying things like, “What a pile of sh*t”, and, “That’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen”. I guess these people like their monster movies to look like Godzilla, which was a terrible film and represents everything I hate about Hollywood monster movies. Each to their own…
I’m not trying to say this is the perfect film. Sure, there are faults I could pick, but I came out of the cinema feeling like I’d witnessed something totally cool, which doesn’t happen to me very often, especially where monster movies are concerned.
So be warned, it ain’t Godzilla, Independence Day or War of the Worlds. It’s a cheese free zone.
Cheers
Tim…