Until 30 minutes ago, this blog was running Wordpress 2.1 courtesy of the Fantastico installation at Bluehost. The blog was fairly stable and worked fine. However, I was investigating upgrading to WordPress 2.1.2 to plug a security issue. The Fantastico Installer currently only offers an upgrade to the flawed 2.1.1 release. In any case, the Fantastico installer now refuses to upgrade my WordPress installation because I have installed new themes, configured additional plug-ins and even added database tables to the schema. ...

Oracle blogs I read by Technorati ranking. Cue Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’. Life After Coffee - Jon Emmons - Rank: 18,499 (405 links from 190 blogs) The Tom Kyte Blog - Tom Kyte - Rank: 24,521 (345 links from 145 blogs) Oracle BI and DW - Mark Rittman - Rank: 31,939 (458 links from 112 blogs) Oracle Scratchpad - Jonathan Lewis - Rank: 44,328 (242 links from 83 blogs) Eddie Awad’s Blog - Eddie Awad - Rank: 60,122 (175 links from 62 blogs) Doug’s Oracle Blog - Doug Burns - Rank: 83,319 (216 links from 46 blogs) Kevin Closson’s Oracle Blog - Kevin Closson - Rank: 87,506 (100 links from 44 blogs) The Oracle Sponge - David Aldridge - Rank: 102,376 (72 links from 38 blogs) The Oracle-Base Blog - Tim Hall - Rank: 112,139 (57 links from 35 blogs) 10 So What Co-Operative - Jeff Hunter - Rank: 154,372 (62 links from 26 blogs) Pete-s Random Notes - Peter Scott - Rank: 161,008 (92 links from 25 blogs) Radio Free Tooting - Andrew Clarke - Rank: 168,201 (70 links from 24 blogs) Oracle 10g Blog - Chris Foot - Rank: 168,201 (51 links from 24 blogs) Oracle WTF - William Robertson - Rank: 194,372 (70 links from 21 blogs) Dizwell Informatics - Howard Rogers - Rank: 194,372 (61 links from 21 blogs) OracleBlog - Robert Vollman - Rank: 194,372 (44 links from 21 blogs) Oracle Stuff I should have known - Andy Campbell - Rank TBD (55 links from X blogs) We Do Not Use Blogs - Mogens Norgaard - Rank: 259,194 (26 links from 16 blogs) Laurent Schneider OCM - Laurent Schneider - Rank: 322,022 (176 links from 13 blogs) Oracle Newbies Blog - Lisa Dobson - Rank: 322,022 (29 links from 13 blogs) OraMoss Oracle - Jeff Moss - Rank: 347,530 (150 links from 12 blogs) Confessions of a database geek - Beth - Rank: 347,530 (32 links from 12 blogs) Oracle Alchemist - Steve Karam - Rank: 413,015 (13 links from 10 blogs) The Eric S. Emrick Blog - Eric Emrick - Rank: 413,015 (12 links from 10 blogs) Oracleoid Blog - Alex Gorbachev - Rank: 656,741 (27 links from 6 blogs) BobaBlog - Robert Baillie - Rank: 656,741 (7 links from 6 blogs) Igor’s Oracle Lab - Gary Myers - Rank: 766,996 (6 links from 5 blogs) DBA’s R US - Nuno Souto - Rank: 1,220,048 (11 links from 3 blogs) Optimal DBA - Daniel Fink - Rank: 1,220,048 (11 links from 3 blogs) Oracle on Windows - Edward Whalen - Rank: 1,724,033 (3 links from 2 blogs)

‘Good evening. Blueyond - sorry - Virgin Media Customer Services. Carol speaking. How may I help you ?’ ‘Slight problem. I can’t get Sky One any more.’ ‘Yes, Sir. I know [sighs inwardly ‘Oh God please not another one’]. Those nasty people from Sky increased the prices and Sir Richard called their bluff. Unfortunately, a horrid Australian man called Rupert then called his bluff back so we can’t show it any more.’ ...

Darren Prowse kicked off an interesting discussion asking what makes you unsubscribe from a feed. This prompted me to revisit my list of my inactive blogs in Google Reader. Normally, I tend to leave most blogs intact because I don’t religiously unsubscribe purely because an author hasn’t posted in a while. However, I find it useful to occasionally check the status of sleeping blogs to see whether the feed has actually died or migrated elsewhere and prune my subscription list accordingly. ...

Stuart Brown from the excellent Modern Life asks ‘Why is RSS adoption so abysmal amongst UK newspapers online ?’ with some interesting analysis including the staggering fact (to me at least) that Modern Life has more Bloglines subscribers than The Daily Torygraph. The detailed analysis in this article interested me. I (delude myself that I) am technically literate. I subscribe to around 100 varied feeds and am very lazy. I live in the UK and am interested in News, Sport and Technology. ...