Posts from 2006

so farewell then, Palm Vx

IT

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.

a short history of Oracle blogging

oracle

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.

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.

finally succumbed

software

Tim Hall was right. I can resist everything except temptation.

Install Apache 1.3.2 for Windows. Very quick and easy. Slight feeling of version envy. The latest version is 2.x. Will upgrade later. Install mySQL 5.0 for Windows. Very quick and easy. Install mySQL Administration Tools 1.1. Very quick and easy. Install mySQL QueryBrowser 1.1.9. Very quick and easy.

Login to mySQL database. Create a table. Insert a record. Select the record. All seems fine.

Install PHP 5.12 for Windows. Very quick and easy.

But wait, what's that ? I actually have to do some work and edit Apache 'httpd.conf' because that code hasn't been written yet. Read 'install.txt' for details. Oh no. Make the necessary changes. Now the Apache service doesn't even start. No Apache error log. Have to run something called Event Viewer. Investigate for 3 minutes. Get bored. Consider reformatting disk, installing Linux and using

./configure; make; make test; make install

Kids want to use computer. I want to watch the football. I need to get a move on. I haven't got all day.

Stumble across Wamp (Apache 2.0.55, mySQL 5.0.18, PHP 5.12 bundle). Phew. Version envy dissolves.

Wamp (Apache) doesn't install cleanly due to conflict with existing installed programs. Uninstall everything. Reboot. Reinstall wamp which is successful. Nice dashboard with phpMyAdmin and mySQL interface (SQLiteManager).

Download Joomla. Use browser based installation which runs perfectly. Run Joomla. Looks nice.

Download gtd-php. Configure. Create a GTD database and tables. Run gtd-php. Looks nice.

Try to create a project. Get '403 Forbidden' error. Ask politely for help. Google points me at a similar issue in Wamp. Make the suggested edits. Adding items now works ! Add the following 'Next Actions'

Install Apache Install PHP Install mySQL Install Joomla Install GTD-PHP Add mySQL to CV

Mark all actions as done. How very satisfying. Turn computer off.

stampede at London Waterloo

uk

Last night, I was standing at London Waterloo station, sincerely hoping that the engineer would be able to fix the carriages for my train home.

Suddenly, there was a stampede of people rushing past me. What on earth was happening ? Was this some spontaneous act of flash mobbing ? Had a train arrived unexpectedly at platform 4 for those impatient people from Basingstoke ? Or was there some sort of inaudible terrorist alert mumbled by the station announcer that I had missed ?

The answer transpired to be none of the above.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts were giving out free samples to promote the opening of a new outlet.

A gentlemen in a suit gleefully came away clutching not one but two large (pizza style) boxes. He also had a can of Stella Artois poking out of his pocket. Bizarre.

curious case of the missing spool file

oracle

Bit of a ghostly theme today.

One great aspect of my job is that I write SQL scripts that are reviewed and executed by other people. This suits me just fine. The less work for me, the better.

Obviously, I never add 'spool off' to the tail of a SQL*Plus script. This is a whole ten characters to type (including newline). Multiply this by all the SQL scripts you might produce in a lifetime and just think of how much time that would waste. In any case, everyone knows that 'exit' implies a 'spool off' anyway.

A while ago, a friendly Oracle DBA ran my SQL script and called me to tell me it had finished. I asked him to email the spooled output for review. He said there was no spooled output generated. I asked him to check the current directory (no), %ORACLE_HOME%\BIN directory (no), the Recycle Bin (no), search all local hard drives for 'patch_prod.lst' (no).

I asked him if the SQL*Plus session was still open and, if so, to simply type 'spool off'. He replied that the SQL*Plus session had already been ended. I was puzzled until I asked 'Is this the GUI version of SQL*Plus on Windows ?' 'Yes', he replied. 'Did you end the session by hitting the 'X' button ?' 'Yes'.

So, it turns out that the spool file is lost when Windows SQL*Plus is terminated using the 'X' button. I didn't know this fact because I normally use 'exit' to close any SQL*Plus session on Unix, Dos Command Window or Cygwin.

I had a suspicion that this gentleman was privately quite enjoying this moment and my discomfort so I said 'Hmm - that's a shame. I really wanted to check the spool to ensure that I had deleted the correct 7.9 million invoices from production'.

Later on, I asked myself what type of ~~mindless idio~~ person uses 'X' to terminate a Windows SQL*Plus session.

Then the answer struck me. A lazy one. Like me.

Most Haunted

tv

Most Haunted is a fantastic TV program hosted by Yvette Fielding, where a Liverpudlian psychic medium, Derek Acorah, visits haunted properties resurrecting the spirits of dear, dead departed souls.

The program is notable for absolutely superb acting by Acorah who can fulfil a variety of roles, effortlessly adopting the voice of tortured, Victorian ladies, in pitch darkness, without the aid of a script.

The supporting actors (Fielding and the camera crew) are also superb. They are simply wasted on Living TV. A career in Hollywood surely beckons.

I was fortunate enough to catch a 'Best of Most Haunted' over Christmas. It was simply the most riveting, compulsive, hilarious viewing.

Most Haunted

music

I have been playing a CD in my car on Disc-Random-Shuffle mode for ten weeks. The CD contains close to 200 songs. I have heard all the songs once, some twice and a handful three times.

This morning, I heard something that sent a shiver down my spine, chilled my bones and momentarily froze me to the spot.

'Spectre versus Rector' by The Fall. This 'song' is a 8 minute rant from Mark E. Smith accompanied by some noise, detailing a ghostly story from the 'Dragnet' LP. 'Spectre versus Rector' sounds as if it was recorded in a bleak, industrial warehouse somewhere up North with a hand-held tape recorder.

The very last song to be selected. Spooky.

Unix for lazy people

unix

I am a very efficient lazy person. I dont like to type seven characters when two will suffice. I think Unix is a fantastic development environment. However, the overly long, verbose commands irritate me slightly. So I use the following aliases and shell functions

    a = tail -f ${ORACLE\_HOME}/rdbms/log/alert\_PRD.log
    l = ls
    ll = ls -l
    up = cd ..
    x = rm -fr \*
    z = wall 'Anyone fancy a quickie after work ?' [disciplinary action pending]

One of the happiest days of my life was when I discovered the tab completion feature in the GNU bash shell and the environment variable $OLDPWD.

When I used to work for Sequent (with an operating system called Dynix/ptx devoid of applications), I used to carry the GNU tools and utilities around on a cartridge tape. Unix and GNU tools were brilliant but the best development tool is Emacs.

The second happiest day of my life was when I discovered Emacs' dynamic abbreviation feature. If you had had to suffer the pain of typing 'supercalifragilisticexpialidoceous' once, then subsequently, you could just type 'sup' following by ESC-/ and Emacs automatically, magically completed the word.

This was without doubt the best feature in Emacs. Well apart from Gnus, VM, font-lock, C-mode, dired, support for shell, grep and cc. Oh and apart from being able to edit text files.