Posts from February 2006

I have been thinking (yes I do a lot of that) recently about managing my personal calendar more effectively. Ideally, I would like a simple Web based calendar that could also sync to my Palm.

I don't really like the Yahoo! Calendar that much even though it can sync with Outlook and the Palm. I simply don't enjoy looking at the Yahoo! calendar. I just think the interface is ugly and there are distracting ads liberally scattered at the top of the screen.

I am following the development of Sunbird with interest but this project is still in development and I think Sunbird only runs locally.

I have an outstanding, low priority ToDo to evaluate Remember The Milk but keep forgetting.

So, I was interested to read Matt Mullenweg speaking in glowing terms about the calendar functionality from 30 Boxes rapidly followed by similar sentiments from Scobleizer.

Mental note. Forego 'Songs of Praise' for just one week and remember to sign up at 30 Boxes on Sunday 5 February when it enters public beta.

In fact, add it to your calendar with an SMS alert so you don't forget.

I wanted to find UK related blogs written by people in the UK as most blog indexes and search engines naturally tend to be heavily weighted towards the US.

Initially, I searched on Technorati for 'UK' tags. However, this included lots of photo blogs from tourists visiting London on whale watching holidays and UK 'political' news (yawn).

Then I came across britblog.com which is an growing index of UK based blogs which includes blogs listed by region and category in addition to recently added and popular blogs.

Britblog also has an interesting map displaying the distribution of blogs across the UK.

Good news. A kind, thoughtful, considerate colleague noticed my unattended Palm and placed it in a locked drawer for safe keeping. Unusually, for such a kind, thoughtful and considerate person, he omitted to send me a note telling me.

Bad news. I will be writing my own Christmas cards this year.

The planned filming of the reconstruction next Wednesday, to be broadcast on this month's edition of BBC Crimewatch, has now been cancelled.

Many thanks to all for your messages of support during this testing time.

PS. Sincere apologies to any recipients of those awful poison pen letters.

A few years ago, I worked for a small internet company and was a successful dot com millionaire. Then the confounded Italians went and devalued the Lira.

We spent (wasted) lots of time interviewing Oracle developers. Interviewing was time consuming and we had a fairly rapid turnover of people with varying technical abilities and personality disorders.

After a while, we decided to set a short technical test in an effort to save time and improve the quality of the technical people we hired.

The test was a trivial piece of PL/SQL. Count all the rows in all the tables in a specified schema. The consequences of introducing of this test were very revealing.

Some candidates (with years of Oracle and PL/SQL experience) flatly refused to take the test at all - 'the agent didn't say anything about a technical test'.? Some candidates asked if they could have access to our embryonic Oracle technical library (a couple of O'Reilly books). Some candidates asked it they could use their own technical books for reference. We flatly refused.

It was interesting to see whether people elected for Linux/vi or Windows/notepad.

It was interesting to see whether people could deliver under pressure.

It was interesting to see whether people asked questions.

It was interesting to see whether people actually compiled and executed the code. Some candidates thought, incorrectly, that the test was purely to 'write the code'.

It was interesting to see whether people visited 'http://tahiti.oracle.com/'. We said you couldn't use books. However, we didn't say you couldn't use the internet.

It was interesting to see whether people commented a trivial procedure.

It was interesting to see whether people counted the rows or checked for the presence of recent statistics first.

It was interesting to see whether people used native, dynamic SQL or tortured themselves with DBMS_SQL.

It was interesting to see whether people favoured SQL*Plus, Pro*C, PL/SQL or Perl/DBI.

The standard of candidates improved. If the technical test was unsatisfactory, we skipped the interview formalities to save time (theirs and ours).

One outstanding candidate delivered an excellent test. Perfect, commented PL/SQL. He even included a file header with CVS macros for version control. The results were correct. He finished the assigned task in minutes. He even used the singular if a table had '1 row'. He was an excellent Oracle PL/SQL developer.

However, we didn't hire him because there was an indefinable, intangible concern, a nagging worry that we couldn't articulate or put our finger on precisely. It just didn't feel right. Hard to explain to the agent. Even harder to explain to him but sometimes you have to go with your instincts.

I once sat on an interview panel. Each interviewer would briefly summarise the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate and a decision would be made by consensus.

However, for one candidate, the first interviewer simply said 'No'.

'OK David. Thank you. John, anything to add to that ?'

John: 'Absolutely no.'

And that was the end of that.

Doug Burns tells of an unusual company with an unusual interviewing technique that reminded me of some interviewing anecdotes.

After one year in IT, I had money in my pocket, no more studies and I was keen, enthusiastic and motivated. Consequently, I was invited on the 'milk round' to interview prospective graduates in Scotland. Flying in an aeroplane, staying in a posh hotel, eating food, drinking beer and not having to pay for any of it motivated me even more.

So I painted a glowing picture of our company to everyone I met. Even people I wasn't interviewing like the hotel receptionist. I couldn't wait to tell the nervous undergraduates, in their ill fitting suits, about the summer barbecue with as much free food and alcohol as you could consume with transport laid on. Nor could I wait to tell them about the Christmas dinner dance at a top notch London hotel with partners invited, a high quality 5 course meal, cabaret, disco, and, again, as much free alcohol as you wanted.

A year later, I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar Scottish face turn up for his induction after his successful application. He was also pleased, enthusiastic and motivated. Well he was. Until, two weeks later, I had to break the news that this years summer barbecue was cancelled due to 'budgetary constraints'. With the aid of counselling, he managed to get over that bombshell until, three months later, I had to break the tragic news that the Christmas dinner dance was also cancelled due to 'adverse market conditions and poor company performance in Q3/Q4'.

A couple of messages to the kind person who accidentally took my Palm Vx from the safety of its docking cradle. Clearly, like me, you can resist everything but temptation.

1. You can also have the mains charger, cradle, spare stylus and a screen protector. I may even have the original box and instructions somewhere. This will help to increase the resale value on eBay. Just look under Brightside, N and give me a call. You will find that I am a very understanding, forgiving type.

2. Thank you. I had a nagging suspicion for a while that the Palm was just a glorified address book. In fact, I didn't even notice its absence for a hour or so. Hopefully, my Palm will find more synchronisations and love in his new home.

3. Thank you. I now have a wealth of commercial and open source software packages to evaluate and high tech gadgets to consider to help fill this gaping void in my life.

4. Finally, a proposition for you. If you send out Xmas cards to everyone in 'Personal' and 'Family', signing the cards 'Happy Christmas. All the best for 2007. Love from Norman & family' and send them by 2nd class post by 10th December, we shall call it quits and I shall take the matter no further.

Just noticed that those nice people at Wordpress.com have added aggregated statistics over 7 and 30 days.

A software company that actually listens to their users and eats their own dog food'. Interesting concept but I don't think it will ever take off.

I was just reviewing the list of Oracle related blogs I subscribe to. Here they are in approximate chronological order with the blogging platform. Apologies for any inaccuracies.

• Mark Rittman - June 2003 - Movable Type 3.2
• Niall Litchfield - March 2004 - Blogger - recent convert to Joomla.
• Howard Rogers - December 2004 - Originally Blogger, Opera, now Joomla. You name a blogging platform or CMS and Howard's probably used it.
• Eddie Awad - Original creation date unknown. WordPress.org (migrated from blogger in June 2005)
• Doug Burns - March 2005 - Blogger (migrated from a Tripod blog which only lasted 3 months. Look at it and you can understand why)
• Lewis Cunningham - March 2005 - ITtoolbox
• Peter Scott - April 2005 - Blogger
• Tom Kyte - April 2005 - Blogger
• Andrew Clarke - May 2005 - Blogger
• Robert Vollman - May 2005 - Blogger
• Jeff Hunter - May 2005 - Blogger
• Tim Hall - June 2005 - Blogger
• Lisa Dobson - July 2005 - Blogger
• Jeff Moss - July 2005 - Blogger
• Gary Myers - August 2005 - Blogger
• Life After Coffee - August 2005 - WordPress 1.5
• Mogens Norgaard - November 2005 - Blogger

A couple of things struck me...

• Mark Rittman was one of the first Oracle bloggers (if not the first) and uses the Movable Type platform. Not one Oracle blogger has chosen to follow suit (ever). I wonder why.
• Most Oracle bloggers use blogger.com which is a hosted platform but most are not afraid to tweak their templates with varying degrees of success. Think garish colours, think 'Changing Rooms'.
• The birth of Tom Kyte's blog seemed to inspire a lot of Oracle bloggers to follow suit.

Anyway, thanks to all of you for the information, the technical content, the thoughts, the ramblings and perhaps most importantly, the humour.