Posts from October 2013

People often write in and ask Norman - just what is this mysterious Music For Sheep playlist of which you speak ?

Music For Sheep is my favourite music playlist of all time. It has provided solace and hope during some pretty bleak times. The playlist is ironically named as a tribute to all the social music sharing services like Spotify and last.fm which encourage sharing of your favourite bands, music and playlists. This is a novelty for 12 minutes but, ultimately a bit irrelevant because, as I remarked way back in 2006:

'You like your music. I like my music. We may share some common interests but it really doesn’t matter'.

So why am I posting this ? Well, because initially I created this playlist on my Android phone for walks around the park and then it got erased when I had to reset the phone.

Then I used Google Music to store the crucial list of songs for eternity but I was subsequently so horrified to find this service sync'ed everything but playlists (coupled with the demise of Google Reader), I chose to delete the bulk of my Google services.

Then I had a brain wave and created a DokuWiki - primarily to store this playlist. But then I let my hosting lapse in favour of Amazon S3 so I found myself re-creating it yet again.

Here it is - salvaged from an old DokuWiki backup - not for you as much as for me.

• Falling Down - Oasis
• She Just Wants To Be - R.E.M.
• These Wooden Ideas - Idlewild
• Crush On You - Brakes
• Sappy (live) - Nirvana
• Little By Litle - Oasis
• Cuyahoga - R.E.M.
• Pilsner Trail - The Fall
• Conversation 16 - The National
• D-7 - Nirvana
• There There - Radiohead
• Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks - The National
• Here And Now - Ride
• Mistake Pageant - Idlewild
• Carrion - British Sea Power
• Spank Thru (live) - Nirvana
• The Lord's Prayer - Siousxie And The Banshees
• Simple Stuff - Echo And The Bunnymen

Slightly skewed with two songs from The National and surprisingly nothing from The Smiths or The Chameleons (who I always list in my favourite bands together with The Fall).

People often write in and ask Is Oracle blogging dead ?

Well, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the list of Oracle blogs I posted way back in 2007 and see what theyre up to.

• Life After Coffee - dead (last post May 2011). The pressure of the No. 1 slot proved too much.
• The Tom Kyte Blog - frequency much reduced but Tom's a busy man.
• Rittman Mead - now a multi-user, shiny, corporate blog.
• Oracle Scratchpad - Jonathan Lewis is still going strong.
• Eddie Awad ...so is Eddie.
• Doug Burns - Our favourite Scotsman is still active and contemplating a migration away from Serendipity.
• Kevin Closson - occasional poster.
• David Aldridge - as above (when something annoys him).
• Tim Hall - still travelling the world, presenting, reading books and watching weird films.
• Jeff Hunter - resting (inactive since May 2012).
• Peter Scott - alive and well blogging under the Rittman Mead umbrella.
• Andrew Clarke - sporadic flurries of activity from Tooting.
• Chris Foot - not known at this address.
• William Robertson - still manages to exclaim 'WTF?!' once a year.
• Howard Rogers - still blogging from Down Under.
• Robert Vollman - resting (since August 2012).
• Andy Campbell - hijacked by spammers. Either that or he really is pimping satellite TV systems and payday loans.
• Moans Norgaard - pining for the fjords (since July 2010).
• Laurent Schneider - actively blogging about Oracle.
• Lisa Dobson - went to the trouble of getting her own domain and then neglected it (since Sept 2011). No longer a 'newbie'.
• Jeff Moss - pimping vacations in Florida.
• Beth - Data Geek Gal has been quiet on data quality (since Oct 2012).
• Steve Karam - the alchemist is busy mixing up strange concoctions involving Hadoop, Hue, Oozie and occasionally Oracle.
• Eric Emrick - nothing since March 2009.
• Alex Gorbachev - busy growing Pythian Corp.
• Robert Baillie - blogging about Agile, Extreme and project management after a 3 year lull.
• Gary Myers - moved house (still in Oz) but helpfully remembered the redirect.
• Nuno Souto - still blogging from Sydney.
• Daniel Fink - The Optimal DBA blog has been dropped with constraints cascaded - which is suboptimal.
• Ed Whalen - wrote a popular book in 2011, got rich on the proceeds and retired in the Caribbean.