Posts from October 2013

Music For Sheep

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).

where are they now ?

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 they're 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.