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in praise of Doug Burns

My longest standing and all-time favourite Oracle blogger is Doug Burns of Edinburgh, near Scotland.

In addition to his sharp, analytical Oracle skills, helpful attitude and easy going manner, Doug does a great deal of unsung, unpaid work for charity (although, obviously he doesn’t like to talk about it) and is a fully paid up member of Amnesty International.

Doug is also passionate about the the causes of data privacy, security issues, the freedom of information and continues to fight an unceasing battle for the rights of the individual against the evil spectre of Google Corporation.

Fulham 2 MUFC 0

On Saturday, I was lucky enough to get a last minute invite to Craven Cottage to watch Fulham play Manchester United.

My unexpected treat came courtesy of a friend who works for a construction company who have 10 corporate tickets at Fulham. Ordinarily, he would have taken his son but, fortunately for me, the poor lad was serving the last day of a grounding as a result of a serious, undisclosed misdemeanour.

sports bars of Europe

The latest update in this occasional and very popular series.

I am currently working in the delightful city of Bern, near Switzerland. I have been here a couple of times before and last April I watched United beat Barcelona 1-0 in the Champions League semi-final thanks to a great goal from Paul Scholes.

Unusually for me, I watched that game with a colleague. Unfortunately for him, I don’t think I was very good company. Well, I mean - who really wants to discuss whether ’late delivery of the extracts pose a serious risk to the success of the project’ when you’re watching your team play in the crucial second leg of the European Cup semi-final.

is Spotify the game changer for online music ?

I have most of my music available in digital format and have occasionally pondered the purchase of a wireless streaming device so I could listen to music anywhere in the house.

Another possibility would be to upload all the music to my own server and stream music from any computer using freely available software (e.g. Icecast).

Of course, both those options cost money and more importantly, time so, as always, I chose to so absolutely nothing apart from duplicating my iTunes library on my two main (home/work) computers.

possession of an offensive weapon

Last Friday, I found myself standing in a short queue at Newcastle airport. I could immediately discern that the global economic recession is starting to take hold up in the bleak, industrial North. Normally, at this time, Newcastle airport is packed with hordes of Geordie holidaymakers bound for the Mediterranean and beer swilling lads in Newcastle football shirts going on a, err, cultural visit to Prague.

However, to my surprise, last Friday, the airport was eerily quiet. No queue for the self-service kiosk. No queue to check the bag, No queue to enter the security area. No snaking queues with temporary barriers to navigate. No smiling, happy, expectant people discussing their fourth overseas holiday of the year.

inside Jamie Carragher's head

Or as New Order once sang ‘In a lonely place’.

Much has been made of Rafa Benitez’s so-called rant against Alex Ferguson. Of course, Benitez is correct for the most part but the most amusing part was when he pulled out a sheet of A4 with the charge sheet.

Benitez is pretty new to this game and he would have been better advised to speak out after Liverpool had won 4-0 extending their lead and avoiding the use of the phrase ‘mind games’ - particularly when he’s not getting involved in them. Supposedly.

embarassing Dad

Recently I collected Norma-Jean from one of her hobbies. As we departed, I stopped to bid farewell to a couple of boys who were preparing to cycle home: ‘See you next time, lads.’

‘Dad - why did you have to say goodbye to those boys ?’

‘Well I see them here twice a week so I was just being friendly…’

‘God - that was so embarrassing. I actually thought you were going to say ‘Cheerio’ as usual’.

BGO to LHR via AMS

This week, I have been working in Bergen, near Norway. Normally, I view my trips to major European cities simply as a means to end and after a while they all tend to blur into one unified major European city. Same hotel room, same office, different people, same problems, same computers, same restaurants with the same cashless transaction mechanism.

Bergen, however, is different. The city is just beautiful. I love it. Mountains, water, snow, history. Just stunning. If I didn’t have ties, I think I would seriously considering moving here full-time.

blogging statistics

Just quickly reviewed the number of posts in each full year since I started this blog.

• 2008 - 94
• 2007 - 219
• 2006 - 395

What does it all mean ? Not sure. Does it matter ? Probably not.

music for nothing

Amazon (UK) recently announced an online music store and a £3 discount on all music downloads on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

To download an album, you need the Amazon Download utility and the music is MP3 format encoded at 256kbps. Best of all, the music is DRM free so you can transfer, copy and play on any device. Normally, I like to buy an actual CD so I can rip into whatever format I need and also as a backup so ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ by ‘Elbow’ was my first ever purchase of online music.