On Friday, Norman Junior III and myself loaded up our picnic hamper, packed the cool box with brightly coloured Bacardi Breezers and set off for SW19. We had been lucky enough to get tickets for Wimbledon tennis in the public ballot last year but, thanks to the English weather, we only saw grey skies and 63 minutes of play. It was scant consolation that we saw Maria Sharapova in the flesh. OK, I’ll admit it - that was a massive consolation ! ...

Although it’s very cool to post on the corporate message board: ‘Hey - why don’t we save the company millions of dollars by using Linux, Gmail and OpenOffice ?’, there are obvious barriers (security and Excel Luddites to name but two) to large corporations adopting server based software. However, I always thought Google Mail would be an obvious fit for academic institutions to reduce the costs of software licenses and IT management. Adoption of such ‘software as a service’ would make sense as although some students are ’late risers’, the majority could also be classified as ’early adopters’ who are comfortable with the technology. ...

Two weeks ago, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Surbiton Trophy where I enjoyed a day in the sun watching an excellent Men’s Final between Frank Dancevic and Kevin Anderson. Norman Junior III also plays tennis at Surbiton albeit not to such a high standard. In the lull between the main event and the Men’s Doubles Final, Norman Junior III and the juniors came on to entertain a handful of spectators on the two main courts, performing some standard drills with their coaches. ...

Oracle AppsLab is one of my longest standing and favourite blogs. Jake Kuramoto (and the AppsLab team) always post interesting and thought provoking articles and I also share a few areas of common interest (Twitter, Disqus, FriendFeed et al). Although I happen to work for the same company as Jake Kuramoto, I have never actually met Jake in person. Curiously, I have had more interactions with Jake by commenting on the blog as opposed to communications via Oracle email. ...

On Friday I returned from a very enjoyable week in Brussels. Hard work, challenging customer and miscellaneous technical issues. However, unusually, I had the pleasure of the company of a few of colleagues so we were able to have a chat over a meal and share a few excellent beers together. Over the past five years, I have visited so many European airports, that they all tend to blur into one. However, certain key characteristics soon reminded me that I was indeed back in Brussels. ...