Posts

fun with the Siebel data model

The Siebel 7.8 data model supports different industry applications (finance and banking, pharmaceutical, sales, telecommunications, energy, media, motor, public sector, retail) and contains 3,920 tables and even more indexes.

The results are just in from a Friday afternoon poll to find the most popular Siebel table:

• S_ACCELERATOR - invaluable in performance tuning. ‘Oh well - there’s nothing for it. Now we are simply going to have to load S_ACCELERATOR’.
• S_CLUSTER_TNT - images of cluster bombs and high explosives but supposedly related to ‘Hospitality’.
• S_AUDIT_ITEM - typically will contain 155 million records of historic audit data dating back to 2003. No-one knows why this data is being collected let alone using it.
• S_DOCK_INITM_43 - Crazy name, crazy table. Docking table for Remote.
• S_CL_PTCL_LSXM - A real tongue twister related to clinical protocols.

And finally…

a polite notice

Two weeks ago, I was working in the beautiful city of Oslo. After a couple of hours, the client finally couldn’t take any more of my tedious hand-waving and badly drawn architecture diagrams so he suggested we had a five minute coffee break.

In the immaculate pine kitchen, my eyes were drawn to a notice in Norwegian affixed to the kitchen cupboard. One of my hosts smiled and said ‘I bet you don’t know what that says’.

Google Reader goes offline

Not it’s not unavailable but Google have added support for offline reading of up to 2,000 items using the recently announced Google Gears.

Another much requested feature and a surprising omission from Reader - the ability to search feeds - is also thought to be on the horizon.

pass the anti-static wrist strap

I usually hate posts that start

‘Apologies in advance but I am going to be offline for 10 days because…’

• I am going to a Web 2.0 conference in Dallas
• I smashed my hand into a glass window
• I am going on vacation
• I am really busy at work
• Personal stuff
• I am getting married
• I am going to an Oracle conference in Scotland
• The RSI is killing me
• My boss/wife/dog discovered this blog
• I am having a blogging crisis of confidence
• Family matters

Mainly because the author inevitably pops up the very next day without any further explanation.

blog milestone

100 subscribers Who would have thought it ? Certainly not me.

the looming spectre of Google

The recent storm in the anti-blogosphere about Google acquiring Feedburner, the frightening prospect of Google placing ads in your precious feeds, capturing all your personal data, monitoring your every movement (online and offline) and logging your brainwaves into the Google data warehouse is starting to irritate me.

Despite the corporate motto, please remember Google is evil and 2084 is just around the corner, folks. Be aware that Google just announced a partnership with global law enforcement agencies to upload all CCT footage to YouTube.

sit back and watch the money roll in

I have had an innate fascination with Google Adsense and the correct spelling of monetization for a while.

Countless times, I was poised to hit the ‘Unsubscribe’ button while hovering over John Chow’s blog. But every single time, I stopped myself. Is this guy for real ? Is he really making thousands of dollars every months from blogging ? Does he really eat in those posh restaurants ?

This decision to place banner ads and a sponsored search box on this site was not taken lightly and sincere apologies to all my principled, minimalist, long-standing, traditionalist readers.

blogging trends

WordPress versus Blogger versus TypePad (according to Google Trends).

Note the slight skew for news items about Blogger.

the tragic case of Madeleine McCann

On 3 May 2007, a four year old toddler (not girl), Madeleine McCann, was abducted from her hotel room in Praia Da Luz, Portugal while her parents enjoyed a well-deserved pizza and a glass of wine in a nearby restaurant.

Since then the parents have launched a concerted and impressive campaign to keep Madeleine’s name in the media spotlight. The distraught mother is carrying Madeleine’s grubby, pink cuddly cat everywhere she goes.

Welcome to WordPress 2.2

I don’t know what I did wrong but I just upgraded to WordPress 2.2 and everything still works.

• Download WordPress 2.2 distribution and read instructions.
• Upload tar archive to Bluehost using pscp.
• Run manual database backup using AutoMySQLBackup.
• Deactivate all plugins.
• $ cp -rv blog blog-213
• $ rm -fr blog
• $ tar zxvf ~/wordpress-2.2.tar.gz
• $ mv wordpress blog
• Overlay contents of original wp-content/plugins and wp-content/themes directories.
• Reactivate all plugins (apart from widgets) which is now in core.
• Check version number (2.2) from dashboard.
• Manually delete 143 spam comments that appeared during the 4 minutes Akismet’s shields were down.
• Admire new full screen WYSIWYG preview post.