Posts from October 2005

I recently stumbled upon Lisa Dobsons Oracle Newbies blog. Although I have never met Lisa, I admire her for two reasons. Firstly, she is about to give a presentation at the UK Oracle User Group in Birmingham. I am a good deal older than Lisa and the prospect of presenting to a large number of 'grumpy old men' would fill me with absolute dread.

Secondly, I really like Lisa's rather self deprecating, modest statement on her profile

I've been an Oracle DBA for 3 years, so still consider myself a 'Newbie'!

In my various jobs, I have met several people working with Oracle with less than three years experience who are variously described (either by others or themselves) as gurus and would take serious offence if anyone ever had the temerity to describe them as a 'newbie'.

Some of these people are indeed experienced, knowledgeable, approachable, flexible, adaptable and eager to learn and perhaps, just as importantly, to share their knowledge and teach others.

Others are undoubtedly very clever people but are somewhat narrow minded in their outlook and suffer from tunnel vision. These types are normally the self-appointed wizards but viewed as insular and unapproachable by others. They will improve performance almost instantly by adding or dropping an index, or gathering statistics but fail to communicate the fact to anyone but merely bask in the glory and yet higher, even more elevated status.

One aspect of my job that I enjoy is that I often visit a client for a short period (2-3 days) so I am blissfully ignorant of the politics, history and personalities involved. In addition, I simply do not have the time (or access) to use email to communicate. Instead I find I get more achieved quicker if I meet people face to face or call them on the telephone to find out information.

This can lead to some interesting situations. Often, the same questions couched in a slightly different way from a fresh face can lead to a different response. For example, a simple request to patch Oracle to 9.2.0.7 or to simply start the OEM Agent that has been repeatedly requested but ignored (or denied) for many months can miraculously become feasible almost immediately.

It is surprising how many so called technical issues actually turn out to be about communication.

Imagine walking into a department store to buy a TV. You weigh up all the possible options and decide which model you want. The price of this TV is £457. The assistant says That will be 457 pounds, Sir as she takes the credit card payment and arranges delivery for next week.

You then happen to go up to the second floor and see the identical TV for £422. That's £35 cheaper than what you've just paid. You go back to the assistant who sold you the goods to query this difference in the price. Unfortunately, the assistant is now on her lunch break but you are promised that she will call you back. She doesn't.

You then leave the department store via the ground floor where you see the identical TV priced at £565.

You arrive home and just happen to check the credit card receipt. The amount debited is £476 instead of £457. Silly you; you should have checked the amount more carefully at the time. You call the department store to complain. The customer services manager you need to speak to is on a break but he will call you back immediately. He doesn't.

Well that is how online shopping for a Dell computer works. There are many different possible ways to configure the identical specification for a desktop PC and get a completely different price ranging from £422 to £565. This difference appears to depend on which path (Offers page, Dimension page) you followed through the Dell web site (and which E-Code is listed) when you added and subtracted the various possible options to configure the final system.

So, if you are thinking of buying a computer from Dell, always compare every conceivable way of configuring the final system before placing the order. Always order on the Internet once you are confident you have obtained the cheapest price. Never order on the telephone from a human being. I was given one price on the telephone and when the invoice arrived via email, a higher price was listed.

Alternatively, it might be just simpler to buy your computer elsewhere.

Watches are useful. My main requirements for a watch are:

1. Display the precise time at all times.
2. Do not need any maintenance like winding or changing the batteries.
3. Automatically adjust for GMT/BST.
4. Automatically adjust for current timezone anywhere in the world.
5. Light. I don't want or need a micro-computer on my wrist that also tells me the weather, my resting heartbeat and the altitude.

So I bought this Casio Waveceptor watch.

1. This watch synchronises with a radio transmitter to guarantee the time is absolutely 100% correct at all times. I know this works because the watch is always precisely in sync with my digital TV service (and British Rail at Waterloo). The two transmitters are located in the UK and Germany but I rarely travel outside Europe.
2. The watch is solar powered so does not need winding or any batteries. No more replacement batteries costing a fiver every two years. No more lengthy discussions about invalidating the warranty because the jeweller has to open up the back to fit the new battery.
3. Yes.
4. Almost but not quite. When travelling, you have to temporarily set your location to the current city and the watch adjusts automatically.
5. The titanium strap means the watch is very light.

Close to absolute perfection.

Airports are pretty dull places. Last Wednesday, I found myself at Heathrow T2, at some unearthly hour in the morning. I wandered round Dixons to have a quick look at the latest gadgets and kill some time. I happened to see a couple of items I was interested in. The first was Microsoft Office 2003 for Student Edition (3 user license). I had already seen this on Amazon at 91GBP and Dixon's tax free price was 110GBP which was, err, twenty pounds more expensive. So, not exactly a brilliant saving at Dixons Tax Free shopping there.

Secondly, a cheap MP3 player (Logik 1GB). This was only 63GBP at Heathrow which was odd because the identical model is available for only 54GBP in my local Dixons on the high street and has also been advertised recently in the national press. So, another triumph for so called Tax Free shopping at Dixons.

Even more odd is that Dixons have a large poster at the entrance to the store proclaiming 'We beat Amazon/Tesco/Argos prices'. Now in the light of my very limited price comparison of just two items, that poster would seem to be misleading at best, downright dishonest at worst and possibly in breach of trading standards regulations.

The poster implies to potential customers that Dixons are proactively monitoring prices at three other major competitors and undercutting their prices so you can buy from Dixons with confidence. I realise that Dixons are under massive pressure from UK supermarkets (who sell cheap DVD players alongside Cornflakes) and internet retailers. In addition, Dixons' profits have also been badly hit by the decision to stop forcing lucrative, extended warranties onto customers but is this really the way to win business back.

Out of interest, I sent an email to Dixons for their thoughts....

I was just looking at my Web site and spontaneously decided to end its sad, sorry life. Static content unchanged in years with dead links with little of interest to anyone. Part blog, part bookmarks, part experiment in HTML. Now consigned to the Internet archives.

I was flying back from Dusseldorf to London on Lufthansa yesterday. For some reason, the kind lady at the check-in desk, upgraded me to business class so I got a nice bread roll and cloth napkin. The gentleman next to me was very disappointed that there were no English language newspapers available on board. When the steward asked why he didn't pick one up at the gate, he became even more irritated, telling him in no uncertain terms that there were no 'English' newspapers at the gate and worse, not a single 'English' newspaper in the business lounge.

So he finally settled down with a copy of 'The Economist' or so I thought. Next thing the senior cabin director was summoned. This time the gentleman, still, obviously disgruntled asked 'Are you trying to cater for an international audience ?' The lady politely explained the situation, apologised once again and offered to scour the plane for a paper. Then he said 'What's the point of me paying extra money to fly business class if you can't even offer me an English newspaper ?' and finally let the subject die.

Two things struck me:

• I bet his company, or more likely, his client are the ones paying the premium for business class and not him.

• I was simply dying to say 'Well next time you fly on British Airways at 17.00 on a Friday to any German destination, why don't you see how many copies of 'Die Welt' and 'Der Spiegel' are available for German passengers ?'

I just created an RSS feed for my blog using Feedburner. It was actually quite interesting to see how my blog was presented in different RSS readers (Thunderbird, Google Reader and Bloglines) where the textual content is the same but may be presented in many different ways and styles.

I once lost quite a long, rambling blog entry due to some finger trouble in the blogger editor so subscribing to the RSS feed will be a quick and easy way to backup the blog.

Another nice feature of Feedburner is that it will automatically ping a number of sources when the blog is updated.

Creating this blog was an experiment and, somewhat to my surprise, I quite like the concept. So I have decided to host my blog on my Web space over at blueyonder. This isnt because I think Telewests hosting service is any more reliable than blogger (never had any issues at all with blogger) but so I can peruse the Web server logs and referrer statistics that Blueyonder kindly gather for me. The transfer of the blog went surprisingly smoothly and I created a placeholder blog to grab the old namespace on blogger.

Google have launched an online RSS Reader. Like most developments from Google, this looks very professional and fits in with their rapidly growing suite of software products. Although I currently use Thunderbird for reading (a very limited number of) RSS sources and blogs, the use of a Web based service to manage all my information sources, accessible from anywhere, is appealing.

I experimented by setting up one source (BBC News) and one thing about the interface immediately struck me like a thunderbolt !

The use of the 'j' and 'k' keys to move the article list up and down. It is just like the good old trusty (and much maligned) Unix editor 'vi'. Now this may appeal to Unix users but I am not sure whether the new generation of IE users will make of the 'oh but for touch typists, it is so much faster' argument.

I used to use Yahoo Bookmarks which maintains a list of Web sites that I could access from any computer. This was a nice idea but I found I didnt use (or maintain) the bookmarks regularly and the links gradually fell into a state of disrepair. For my most frequently accessed Web sites, I would simply type the start of the address into the browser and simply let auto-complete do its work which was quicker.

A couple of weeks ago, Yahoo launched My Web which overhauled the bookmarks functionality and added the ability to save a copy of the Web page so that the referenced content was preserved in the event that the Web site was subsequently moved or deleted. However, My Web still uses a hierarchical system of folders to store the bookmarks. For example, the Manchester United home page would typically be stored in a folder named 'Sport-Football-Manchester United'.

Then I discovered social bookmarking (Furl, del.ico.us, spurl) which also saves the state of the Web page and maintains a personal, searchable archive (just like My Web). However, the key difference with Furl (et al) is that all Web pages for all users are stored on a central server. For any Web page, Furl can then quickly display similar, related, associated pages which have also been stored by different Furl users. This is what those Web 2.0 people call 'social bookmarking'.

Another difference is that Furl'ed pages does not use a hierarchical structure. Instead, stored pages are simply associated with various tags. So, in the earlier example, the Manchester United home page might be tagged as 'Sport', 'Football' and 'Manchester'. Note that, unlike My Web, the bookmarked Furl page can be associated with multiple categories. Tagging is the key to effective searching with Furl.

This feature is really useful. For example, I am currently interested in using Microsoft OneNote as a single repository to store information, emails, jottings, to do lists, articles, and even Outlook notes. OneNote has a couple of disadvantages; it uses a proprietary format and is a commercial product. So I searched SourceForge and Freshmeat for an OpenSource alternative without much success. Then I discovered KeyNote which looked promising but wasn't much different from using outline mode in Emacs.

Then I stumbled across EverNote and, using Furl, immediately got directed towards some more interesting Web based organiser applications like BackPack, JotSpot and possibly even TiddlyWiki all of which immediately get furled.

Another subtle way that Furl affected my usage was that previously I might stumble across a Web site of interest but could not be bothered to file it as (subconsciously) I didn't want to clutter up my nicely organised bookmarks. With Furl, I tended to add the Web site regardless and simply tag the page as 'Of interest'.

Another possible use for Furl is to capture ideas for blogs. When you see a Web site of interest, simply tag it as 'Ideas for Blog' together with a short comment.