Here is a series of email exchanges I had with Mark Burgess in late 1998. I converted the original text to HTML and corrected a couple of minor typos. I’m a great fan of The Chameleons and recently was sad enough to transcribe a few quotes from bootlegs and put them on the Web. Interesting, I’ll check it out next time I’m online. Were you a big fan of The Fall ? I just love the bit where you sing ‘Rowche Rumble’ in ‘Splitting in Two’. ...

For Sale: 1.8 kg of assorted sweets. The surplus of confectionery is the result of an unfortunate trick or treat incident a few years ago. The wife and I had argued for many hours over who was going to escort our two young children, dressed up in Halloween outfits, carrying pumpkins to demand money with menaces from neighbours. The alternative was even worse - to stay at home and answer the door to similar young, lovable street urchins. ...

Doug Burns posts a typically honest article about the art of self-promotion and the issue of references. Personally, I think Doug’s blog is itself an excellent tribute to his technical competence, his ability to communicate and share information as well as offering an insight into his personality. I must confess that my manager’s Inbox is not overflowing with glowing testimonials from colleagues and customers, let alone unsolicited ones. I used to reassure myself that this was because IT managers are exceptionally busy people with (justifiably) high expectations when paying for expensive consultants. Nowadays I just put it down to my lack of technical ability. ...

Drupal gets an upgrade to 4.7.4 via the Bluehost Fantastico auto-installer. The Wiki gets converted to MediaWiki simply because it is a lot easier on the eye. This software requires PHP5 and I was originally on a server running PHP4. However I read that Bluehost does also support PHP5. I just asked politely and got moved to a different server. No fuss. No questions. Technical support just did it. Quickly and efficiently. ...

John Chow notes the vast majority of traffic to his blog from search engines comes from Google. I see a similar pattern for this humble blog with over 95% of search engine traffic arriving from Google despite the fact that the blog has been indexed by the major players. Although I use Firefox (where the default search engine is Google) and I hardly ever use any other search engine, I was surprised that the number of visitors from Yahoo was a paltry 2%. I also thought more people using Internet Explorer would get directed from MSN/Live as the breakdown of browsers visiting this blog is split evenly between Firefox and Internet Explorer. ...

Many thanks for your lovely, thought provoking email. Unfortunately, I am currently on annual leave (although I couldn’t resist the temptation to check my work email when the wife wasn’t looking tonight). I will reply to your email on my return on Monday 30 October. Well, actually I won’t. If it was sent to a mailing list, I will probably skip it but may dig it out from the archives in a few months when I am onsite desperately looking for a solution to the identical problem. ...

Something I didn’t watch: Longford Something I did listen to: The Smiths’ Troy Tate sessions

I am slowly trying to fully assimilate and comprehend these facts: Google is now worth more then IBM IBM invest a lot of resources in SecondLife while I am still resistant to IM. Manchester United placed posters of Liverpool’s past successes in the visitors section at Old Trafford. Rumour has it the pictures were only black and white but were still stolen after Liverpool’s recent 2-0 defeat.

Yesterday, my son took part in a junior tennis tournament. As I watched the competitive matches in progress, there was a lot of fist pumping, grunts, muttered expletives, muted swearing, loud groans and self flagellation. And that was just the parents. Most of the kids were just enjoying the tennis. I often wonder how many of these parents were living out their dreams through their offspring. Both of my children have already achieved more in competitive sport than I ever did so I am immensely proud of them and just try to support them in everything they do - win, lose or draw. ...

Google Co-op is a customisable Google search engine and I just created a personalised, custom search for Oracle that scours AskTom, Jonathan Lewis’ site and www.oracle.com (including TechNet). This targetted search is useful and will undoubtedly save me time. However, I was unable to get any results from ‘tahiti.oracle.com’ (Oracle documentation set) which is normally my first port of call. Also, I assume Metalink is similarly off limits (account required).