The ORACLE-BASE Blog

It appears my hosting provider had a few problems yesterday evening. I seem to have lost any of my database backed stuff, like the forum and blog for a few hours. I think most of the articles were still present, but I can’t be sure.

Anyway, this morning things seem back to normal. I guess it’s good to keep you all on your toes. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Doug, random off-topic posts are good. 🙂

I managed to catch most of the ladies final at Wimbledon on Saturday. I was stretching most of the time, but on several occasions I found myself spontaneously bursting into applause at some of the things Venus Williams did. I don’t follow tennis that much these days and I don’t have any favorite players, but when someone has been dogged with injuries it’s nice to see things come good. I was very pleased for her.

I was planning on watching the mens final and some of the Silverstone Grand Prix, but I took my nephews swimming on Sunday morning, then found there was a battle reenactment in the park next to the pool. It’s not easy to persuade a 5 year old and a 2 year old that tennis and motor racing are more interesting than a bunch of people dressed up as soldiers with cannons, rifles, swords, knives and pikes.

We wandered around for several hours, getting explanations of the lifestyle and fighting techniques. My nephew got to write with a quill and hold a sword and a rifle. We watched the soldiers fighting through the streets of Shrewsbury, then eventually there was a battle on the quarry park. The noise of the cannons and rifles freaked the kids out so we made a sharp exit.

Although it’s not exactly my cup of tea, I learned a few interesting things including:

• The term penknife came about because of the small knives people used to shape their quills (or pens).
• The term hang fire originally referred to the charge in a rifle smoldering, rather than exploding. Very dangerous when you attempt a reload.
• The term “flash in the pan” comes from the flash produced as the gun powder ignites in the pan of old wick-based rifles. Here’s me thinking it was about chip pan fires. 🙂

When I got back home I caught the end of the tennis. Roger Federer looked very downhearted and beatable, but in a flash it all turned around and he was the Wimbledon champ again. I felt a little sorry for Rafael Nadal as he looked like the better player on the day to me, but it’s the result that counts. 🙂

It was a pity Lewis Hamilton didn’t win the Silverstone Grand Prix. I find it amusing that some of the press, who have built him up to be some kind of racing deity already this season, are acting like this is some sort of crack in the armor. So, he made a mistake. Big deal. Give the kid a break. He still managed yet another podium. I seem to remember that Michael Schumacher made a few mistakes in his career. 😉

Cheers

Tim…

Andy C wrote an interesting post on Google vs Yahoo. It prompted me to take a look at my own statistics, something I usually try to avoid. Based on last month, here are the standout points:

• 80% of my site traffic comes from search engine referrals.
• Of those search engine referrals, 80% are from Google.
• Only 0.6% of referrals come from Yahoo!
• The traffic is fairly evenly split between Europe, Asia and the Americas

Interesting…

Cheers

Tim…

It’s that time of year again. At about midday today I will be 38 years old. I’ll probably be swimming, which is a good way to mark the occasion.

Cheers

Tim…

Yesterday I had an episode where my vision was totally distorted. At first, my central vision was blurred and I could see flashing lights. Then over time the distortion and the flashing lights moved towards my peripheral vision, leaving my central vision fine. Two visits to the hospital later and I was diagnosed with visual migraine. It’s the same visual distortions experienced by some migraine sufferers, but without the headache. Possible triggers include:

• Caffeine
• Cheese
• Dehydration
• Stress

A life without diet coke and cheese is no life! 🙂

Now I know I’ve not had a stroke and I don’t have a brain tumor, I’m going to look for the positive in this. Next time it happens I shall play some mp3s on my phone and pretent to be in a disco until it passes. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

After receiving a number of complaints about the blog not displaying properly in various browsers, or various window sizes, I’ve decided to try a new theme. This one is a little plainer, but still kind-of nice, so let’s see how long this one lasts. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

On Sunday I went to the West Mid Show in Shrewsbury for the second year in a row. It’s an agricultural show with a whole host of machinery and livestock on display. I’m not a country type, but I do like having a look at all this stuff.

Anyone in the UK will know that the last few days have been pretty horrendous from a weather perspective. Despite this, me managed to avoid most of the rain. The agricultural equipment went down really well with my nephews. As you can imagine, they are pretty sturdy machines, so the manufacturers don’t mind having children climbing all over them.

I guess I actually looked a bit more closely at the livestock this year, because I noticed loads of weird breeds that I don’t remember from last year. I didn’t realize there was so much variation in the shape of sheep heads. Some looked like dogs, some looked like rabits, and one breed reminded me of a dinosaur from the Walking With Dinosaurs series. Freak Show!

The cows were pretty cool. There were two standout breeds for me. First, the Belgian Blues are like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of cows. If you needed a cow as a bouncer at a night club, you would pick a Belgian Blue. They look totally amazing close up. Second, the Dexter cattle. These are so dinky compared to all the other cows. If I had a spare 2 acres, I would get a couple and just watch them. The farmer displaying them was trying to convince me how good they tasted, but I’m a vegetarian, so it fell on deaf ears. I just thought they looked cool. Kind of like the dachshunds of the cow species. 🙂

Last year, one of the highlights for my nephew was the dancing diggers. Take a bunch of JCB diggers and do some formation driving and Bob’s your uncle! This year they had the Bolddog Motocross Show Team doing some awesome motorbike jumps. The arena wasn’t that big, and the rain had made it very slippery, so I was quite nervous watching this display. The two main riders did some amazing jumps. You can see the sort of things they were doing on their website. For this display they also had a 15 year old boy jumping. On his third jump he lost the back end of the bike, due to the slippery conditions, as he was jumping off the ramp and fell to the floor. It was an incredible fall, but he got up and walked away fine. He spent the rest of the display standing on top of the lorry with the guys jumping over him. When we got back to my brother’s house my nephew got his bike out. I wonder what he was imagining as he jumped off the curbs. 🙂

Good day!

Cheers

Tim…