Posts from June 2006

What could be worse than forgetting to bookmark the obscure page you found that maps out the perfect walking tour of Venice ?

Well I can think of one thing. Going on a lovely, romantic weekend city break and getting lost (and wet) in the narrow backstreets of Venice. Then I eventually find an Internet cafe but am horrified to discover that the computer is locked down and I can't install Google Browser Sync. My wife would be absolutely livid.

Google have some innovative products but I honestly can't see this one being 'disruptive'. Blinklist, anyone ?

My humble blog got a mention on the Google front page. Well, my History of Oracle entry appeared in the Blogs section of the Oracle page on Google Finance.

Next stop - Top WordPress.com blogs.

A modern, standards compliant RSS feed. Whatever next. Lets hope people take this opportunity to switch to a full feed.

Odd to compare Google's relative inactivity with all the features, languages, statistics, themes and functionality added to WordPress in the last six months.

Inevitably, Google enters the online spreadsheet market to provide competition for ThinkFree. No charts (yet) and limited invite only but it's coming.

As an aside, I don't use Excel much. My kids are much more proficient at producing pretty, colourful pie charts and histograms than me.

However, I also find it quite staggering that many sensible, intelligent adults spend their lives in Microsoft Excel. A gentleman once emailed me a spreadsheet and I hunted high and low across all tabs for any relevant table data, pretty charts and forumlae.

Finally, I had to admit defeat and called him rather sheepishly. It turned out the 'data' was simply plain, good, old fashioned text (words) in various cells (paragraphs).

A couple of people stumble across this blog searching for the History of Oracle but ultimately go away disappointed.

For those people, there is a brief but interesting timeline (covering 1977 to 2001) detailing the development of Oracle Corporation in this freely available screensaver available from Club Oracle.

The screensaver is the one titled 'Oracle Defining Moments - 25 Years of Technology Innovation'.

Another article in this occasional (and extremely popular) series.

Sorry about my homework, Sir. I have actually finished my 1500 word essay on the Black Death but when I went to print my work out last night, the folder called 'My Documents' was locked.

At first I thought my Dad was playing another of his funny, little tricks so I screamed down the stairs 'DAD - WHY ARE YOU SO ANNOYING ?'. Then I had to wait because he was watching 'The shirts of 66' and could not be disturbed.

Then my Dad had a look and couldn't get my Word document either. He muttered darkly about some hacker who had somehow accessed our PC despite him having paid good money for Norton Internet Security (which was a load of rubbish and would be going back to Dixons for a full refund tomorrow) and supposedly locking down our wireless network so securely that my Mum can no longer use it.

I summoned up the courage and asked him whether he actually could get my homework back because he works in IT and he once told me he was a 'consultant'. Or should I just start typing now.

He replied 'Hang on a minute, son. I have just found a file named 'INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO GET YOUR FILES BACK' that might be relevant'. Then he went a funny colour and shouted at the screen: 'Virus...Hackers...Ransom...Archiveus...Russian drug mafia'

Apparently, he could have got the file back but is too mean to pay the 5,000 dollar ransom demanded by the Russian hackers just for my essay on the Black Death.

So, you see, Sir that is why I haven't done my homework. I know it sounds a little far fetched but it's true.'

'Sorry. Brightside. Please stop telling lies. Detention tonight after school and I'll be speaking to your parents.'

Oh no. WordPress are now promising to add import/export functionality which is the only barrier stopping me from migrating to my own hosted WordPress.org blog.

That would open up a whole new world of plug-ins, themes, statistics...

Adsense Revenue: 0.00 USD
Ranking: 145,413
Pages: 0

WordPress has a total of 37 themes. I have recently fallen out with my long standing favourite and top scorer, Regulus 2.1.3, after he blatantly deceived me over the state of his CSS injury.

Consequently, I will be implementing a rotation policy (with immediate effect) to give each squad member a fair and equitable chance to stake his claim (hand in glove).

Then I will conduct a poll of all my loyal readers (both of them) to determine the winner.

Then I will reinstate Regulus 2.1.3.

You are currently admiring Solipsus 1.5 (aka Cartoon Network ).

I have a video of Pete Dohertys, err, duet with Elton John at Live 8.

It is clearly marked and I have removed the write-protect tab.

I am not a fan of The Libertines or Babyshambles.

I just want to use it to show my children that's what drugs do to you.