Random stuff…

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…

In the Valley of Elah and Cloverfield…

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…

C, a slight return…

My company are in the process of moving one of our legacy applications written against UniVerse from Tru64 to RHEL5. I set up a RHEL5 server yesterday, then got roped into trying to figure out why a bit of our C code wasn’t working. I used to do quite a bit of C in a previous life, but on reflexion I shouldn’t have made this public knowledge. 🙂

After a little bit of messing I sorted the problems in our code, only to notice that UniVerse wouldn’t recompile. A bit of rooting through some of the UniVerse source code and the odd Google search made me a little suspicious. It seems gcc version 4.x. is a lot stricter about certain programming practices and the pre-4 versions. I switched to gcc34 provided by a compatibility package and the “less than ideal” UniVerse code compiled without complaint.

I could look on this experience in a negative light and bemoan the loss of a previous skill set, but instead I choose to take away a positive view and think, “Not bad for a grunt DBA!” 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Sweeny Todd…

I really wanted to enjoy Sweeny Todd. I like Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, so I thought it had potential. I’m not a fan of musicals, but I saw an interview with Tim Burton where he said they didn’t go for the full on musical thing because they used regular actors, rather than the traditional sort of musical actors. This gave me a little hope.

I went to the cinema with two other people. Jodie, a drama teacher, was disappointed because she expected it to be more like the stage musical. Apparanetly there is some stuff missing and vocally it wasn’t what she expected. Steve claimed it was the worst film he had ever seen. I thought it was just OK. I know this sounds stupid, but I didn’t expect there to be so much singing. I thought it would be acting, broken up by a few songs. Instead it’s almost continuous song, broken up by brief spells of talking. I now realise the error of my ways, and I will avoid musicals like the plague, whether on film or stage. It’s just not my bag.

Visually, it’s classic Tim Burton. Very dark and grimey, with enought spurting blood to make it an 18. Helena Bonham Carter is like a gothed up version of her character in Fight Club. Johnny Depp is a strange mix of Edward Scissor Hands and Captain Jack Sparrow. Sacha Baron Cohen, of Borat and Ali G fame, was surprisingly good.

I fear that musical types won’t get this film, and non-musical types (like me), just won’t like this film. I’m not sure what audience it is aimed at. If nothing else, it’s taught me a lesson. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Travel Insurance…

I just sent off the last of the invoices from the Hospital in San Francisco to my travel insurance company. It looks like the total cost of my treatment was around £1000. I paid about £50 for the insurance and had to pay a £60 claim excess. So that’s about £890 I saved on the deal so far, and I’ve got at least three more overseas trips before the policy runs out.

Just goes to show, it pays to get travel insurance! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Twitter, funny coincidences and updates…

Inspired by Dan Norris, I ventured on to Twitter yesterday and had a really good laugh. I’m not sure how regular a visitor I will be, but it is a neat way to keep in touch, and vent occasionally. It takes a bit of getting used to… 🙂

Jake posted this on twitter, “slammed finger in door ftw!”, and soon after this blog post appeared, Half-Baked Idea: “Tweet” your Pain! Spooky… 🙂

Regarding Twitter clients, Dan suggested Snitter and Eddie suggested Twhirl. Both had problems from behind a firewall, but worked fine from home. I logged on this morning and saw this, The Best Twitter Client for Windows Desktop, shared by Andy C on Google Reader.

Finally, I was in the mood for a cleanup, so I decided to revamp my Blog Aggregator. It’s been chugging along merrily for nearly two years, but it was looking a little sad and neglected, so I spruced it up a bit. It was never meant to include all Oracle blogs, like OraNA.info, just things I follow.

Cheers

Tim…

No Country for Old Men and Alien vs Predator – Requiem…

I saw a couple of films at the weekend:

No Country for Old Men – I didn’t really know much about this film before I went, so I didn’t have any expectations. I’d seen a few Coen brothers films and thought they were OK, but I’m not a major fan or anything.

It’s an odd film because you could list a load of reasons why it’s crap and I would have to agree, but you could also list a load of reasons why it’s brilliant and I would agree also. My overall feeling was that it was a cool film, but most of the cool factor comes from the way it fails to follow the normal Hollywood rules. Things don’t happen as you would expect, and characters don’t evolve in a predictable manner. It’s not like they are trying to break the rules. More like the rules had never existed. Cool!

Alien vs Predator – Requiem – I loved the first 4 Alien films (even the 3rd). I was also one of the few people that found something positive to say about the first AVP film. I know it wasn’t a proper Alien-style film, but is was a fun action flick.

Anyway, AVPR follows on from the first AVP film, so now we have Aliens, Predators and the Alien-Predator hybrid born at the end of AVP. Throw in a few dumb-ass humans and a military woman, as a homage to Ripley, and Bob’s your uncle. It’s not going to win any “Best Film” prizes, but it’s a good laugh.

Cheers

Tim…

Hot-Pluggable…

“Hot-Pluggable” was one of the big buzzwords at OpenWorld 2007. The message Oracle were trying to convey was that an organization doesn’t have to use the total Oracle stack. Of course, they would prefer them to, but if an organization already has an investment in non-Oracle technology, that doesn’t exclude them from snapping pieces of Oracle technology into the mix.

I listened to this message with more than a little skepticism, not really believing that Oracle would actually make their applications available to run on alternative databases and application servers, but it does seem like this plan may pay off in two ways.

  1. Oracle will be able to sell products to sites that already have a heavy investment in non-Oracle technologies. That’s the obvious message that is being touted, which I already mentioned it in the opening paragraph.
  2. The future acquisition of companies would be far easier for Oracle, as their newly acquired products could just slot into fusion middleware from day-one.

I’ve never heard Oracle suggest option 2 as a reason for the Hot-Pluggable buzz, but the talk of acquiring BEA make me think it may be as important to Oracle as option 1. WebLogic would just snap right in there, no messin’. Bob’s your uncle. 🙂

Enough of the conspiracy theories.

Cheers

Tim…

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