Posts from October 2006

Monochrome screenshot from the wget mailing list featuring Emacs and Supercite circa 1997.

Just remembered that I was shocked and ashamed to discover that my father (Silver Surfer) was using IE7 when I last took my laundry home so I felt obliged to upgrade from IE6.

I also took the opportunity to upgrade to Firefox 2.0 RC2 from 1.5.0.7.

No detailed, lengthy reviews, I'm afraid. I did notice some changes to the user interface (IE now looks like Firefox 1.x) but most importantly, all my Firefox extensions still appear to work.

After my recent move from the community of WordPress.com, once again I truly feel like a Blog in Isolation. There are a few features I missed from WordPress.com:

• Dashboard - I can still check the WordPress blog, Top Blogs and Top Posts independently.
• Forums - While I can still participate, I don't really feel like a member of that WordPress community any longer.
• Comments - signed up for coComment that tracks all comments (not just those on WordPress.com)
• Tag surfer - can create Technorati feed(s) to replicate this but this was a nice, dynamic feature.
• New WordPress themes - If I like them, I simply download and experiment on this blog.
• Latest WordPress posts - an occasional diversion. No real equivalent (unless I login to my placeholder WP account)
• Avatars - Not bothered but favicon is your friend.

The Barthelme theme for WordPress is close to absolute perfection.

My only minor reservation is that elements of the sidebar (Pages, Categories, Recent Comments) and the title of the Next/Previous posts appear in UPPER case.

This is one of my pet hates as it looks like SHOUTING which is RUDE and, IMHO (sic), is completely at odds with the minimalist, understated feel of the theme.

However, a quick edit in 'style.css' to change two occurrences of 'text-transform: none;' to 'text-uppercase: none;' fixed that.

My life is now complete. All that remains is to add 'CSS' to my CV.

Just installed and configured Drupal 4.7.3 and noted an announcement asking for volunteers to test newly added support for the Oracle database.

Most open source, content management systems (WordPress, Joomla et al) use MySQL so it will be interesting to see whether there is much demand for a CMS running on an Oracle database.

On a similar note, Oracle are likely to confirm that the next major release of Siebel (8.0) will be available on the Linux platform. The official announcement is expected at Oracle OpenWorld later this month. This isn't wholly unexpected as support for Linux in Siebel 8.0 was included in the public Statement of Direction (May 2006).

The availability of the Siebel on Linux is is likely to be an attractive option for smaller companies, some of whom who already deploy the Siebel database on a Linux platform.

Last night as I waited for the baggage carousel to leap into action at Terminal 1, I heard a familiar voice speaking on his phone. I looked round and there was a very familiar face - the face of Michael Aspel.

Then I started thinking about all the celebrities and superstars I have seen over the years

Walked past Martin Buchan with mouth open (mine not his) on Deansgate.

Tommy Docherty signed a pack of MUFC matches for me in a Chinese restaurant in Wilmslow.

Temporary job at NatWest bank where I...

• Printed up cheque books with the girlfriend of Norman Whiteside.
• Gave 'Rita Fairclough' the balance of her current account.

Spotted members of The Fall (minus Mark and Brix) having a quiet, pre-match drink in the student union bar at Warwick University.

Flew to Sydney in 1990 with the Australian cricket team. The novelty of Merve Hughes' suggestive comments to BA stewardesses, his loud and repeated demands for alcohol and generally obnoxious behaviour soon wore off. In fact, it wore off 10 minutes into the 9 hour flight. Thankfully Alan Border had a quiet word in his moustache.

Saw George Best in a King's Road pub.

Made John Inverdale a cup of tea in my kitchen.

Chatted with Mark Burgess before a Chameleons gig.

And, err, that's it.

The mySql database for this WordPress blog was unavailable at 18:45.

Service was restored at 19:15.

I have never heard customers complaining about the abysmal performance of the Oracle pseudo-table DUAL. Nor have I ever encountered a real-life performance issue that was attributed to slow access to DUAL. Rarely have I been asked to tune an SQL statement that was sub-second and took a massive 3 consistent gets.

Another reason I won't be using this tip is that, a few years ago, I did encounter some unexpected, weird, obtuse behaviour in an Oracle system that completely baffled everyone. This was eventually tracked to the presence of not one, but two rows in the DUAL table.

Better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Just add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 to your blog configuration.

Lets see if it works.

Update: Posted at 17:56. Pinged by GoogleBot at 18:00. Referrer (to this article) from Google Blog Search at 20:58.

Forget Box.Net. Forget Mozy. Forget memory sticks. Forget USB hard drives.

DreamHost have upgraded the 'basic' $7.95 per month hosting package from 20GB to a staggering 200GB disk storage.

As this humble blog currently occupies 0.01%, I have plenty of capacity for my photos, documents, CV (in txt, doc, PDF, LaTeX formats) and all my homework. In fact, as my hard disk is a paltry 40GB, I have room for absolutely everything.

And if that wasn't enough, Dreamhost are giving me a further 1GB every week.