A long time ago, there was a unique band called The Chameleons who hailed from Middleton, Manchester. Like a lot of bands, The Chameleons made some records, built up a dedicated following, played lots of gigs and then split up. Like a lot of bands, The Chameleons reformed. Like a lot of bands, The Chameleons made some more records, played some more gigs and then split up (again). However, unlike a lot of bands, the lead singer, Mark Burgess, once went to a private individual’s house and played at their birthday party. ...

A long journey starts with a single step… I was curious about applying the concepts and ideas behind GTD to try to manage my time (both at home and at work) more efficiently so I read up a little about GTD over the weekend and actually ordered a copy of Dave Allen’s book (having read snippets in a bookshop who were nice enough to give me a nice leather armchair for my comfort). ...

Have a look at this blog. Lots of interesting, varied material, frequently updated, nicely presented, excellent use of images, easy to navigate, searchable, well structured and very professional looking. All in all, an excellent blog. This blog is by Paul Stamatiou, a 19 year old student. A few months ago, I happened across this article on Paul’s blog when I first started blogging but stupidly forgot to bookmark it. This is undoubtedly one of the best personal blogs I have seen. In fact, I was so impressed I did as he suggested and nominated Paul’s blog for the ‘Best Teen Blog’ award. ...

Those busy people at WordPress have opened up a couple of forums for support issues and feedback for users of WordPress.com This is a brilliant idea as I currently have to use the ‘Feedback’ form for all my brilliant suggestions and reporting minor glitches which was a little lonely and uni-directional.

Dear Cathy and Clare I am increasingly worried about the size of my Inbox. I am almost embarrassed to admit this but it currently has 6,207 items dating from way back September 2003 (and that doesn’t even include ‘Archived Folders’). Tom Kyte (who I admire and respect greatly) likes to keep everything in its place, spic and spotlessly span and currently has a single item sitting in his Inbox. And his finger is poised over the ‘Delete’ button to expunge that one too ! ...

Oracle have released Raptor (a freely available GUI SQL query tool) which may be of interest to those of you who use Toad or are frustrated with the terseness of the SQL*Plus interface. Raptor is primarily a cross platform, PL/SQL developer tool, written in Java (60 MB download). The SQL output is a scrollable grid (like Toad) and there is the standard schema browser, PL/SQL debugger, SQL pretty printer, DDL generator and a graphical interface to explain plan for query tuning. ...

WordPress made some changes to the available themes just before Christmas which I have only just noticed. I particularly like the changes in Regulus 2.0 by Ben Gillbanks as you can now customise the theme a little. You can choose to have the calendar displayed (Howard will be pleased), change the ‘Blogroll’ to use link categories, change the header image and the colour scheme. Also, the irritating ‘Message essage’ bug is fixed. ...

There are new, improved blog statistics available from WordPress.com with more to come. No additional Javascript needed. Integrated reports from the dashboard. Superb. As Matt said in a recent interview, these guys are active bloggers themselves so they understand what users want, what is useful, what is not and they also listen to feedback.

Dear Jeff Bozos It is 39 years and 7 months since my last confession. Back in 2001, I opened an Amazon Associates account, placed a link to a wonderful Oracle book I wanted to buy on my personal Web site, clicked through on the link and purchased the book from Amazon (UK). This abuse of the referral program credited my newly opened Amazon Associates account with the princely sum of 1.55 GBP. ...

Doug Burns raises a surprising number of issues in a seemingly throwaway comment about music. I used to say I only have three passions in life ‘Music, Football and Girls. The only thing that changes is the order.’ :-) Stuff that is too personal to discuss in a blog. I am startled about certain stuff I have seen posted in blogs. Personal stuff that I would never dream of posting. Oracle versus Music versus Football. I started this blog after lurking on the Oracle blog community for a while and initially thought I would post occasional enlightening, technical articles which were met with worldwide acclaim. After a while, I realised, those posts would be few and far between. ...