Blog in Isolation

There is a radiant darkness upon us

Posts

Google Docs and Spreadsheets

Google have announced ‘Docs & Spreadsheets’ which is an overhaul of the original Writely interface and integration with Google Spreadsheets. I must admit I prefer the Google Docs interface and was interested to see that Docs can still publish to a blog (just like Writely).

The documentation suggests that tagging the article with keywords will be mapped to matching blog categories and that the document title will indeed be preserved in the blog entry. However, a simple test confirms that neither of these two features work as advertised (on WordPress at least). Sigh.

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browser upgrades

Just remembered that I was ‘shocked and ashamed to discover’ that my father (Silver Surfer) was using IE7 when I last took my laundry home so I felt obliged to upgrade from IE6.

I also took the opportunity to upgrade to Firefox 2.0 RC2 from 1.5.0.7.

No detailed, lengthy reviews, I’m afraid. I did notice some changes to the user interface (IE now looks like Firefox 1.x) but most importantly, all my Firefox extensions still appear to work.

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WordPress.com features

After my recent move from the community of WordPress.com, once again I truly feel like a ‘Blog in Isolation’. There are a few features I missed from WordPress.com:

  • Dashboard - I can still check the WordPress blog, Top Blogs and Top Posts independently.
  • Forums - While I can still participate, I don’t really feel like a member of that WordPress community any longer.
  • Comments - signed up for coComment that tracks all comments (not just those on WordPress.com)
  • Tag surfer - can create Technorati feed(s) to replicate this but this was a nice, dynamic feature.
  • New WordPress themes - If I like them, I simply download and experiment on this blog.
  • Latest WordPress posts - an occasional diversion. No real equivalent (unless I login to my placeholder WP account)
  • Avatars - Not bothered but favicon is your friend.
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improving on perfection

The Barthelme theme for WordPress is close to absolute perfection.

My only minor reservation is that elements of the sidebar (Pages, Categories, Recent Comments) and the title of the Next/Previous posts appear in UPPER case.

This is one of my pet hates as it looks like SHOUTING which is RUDE and, IMHO (sic), is completely at odds with the minimalist, understated feel of the theme.

However, a quick edit in ‘style.css’ to change two occurrences of ’text-transform: none;’ to ’text-uppercase: none;’ fixed that.

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Drupal supports Oracle database

Just installed and configured Drupal 4.7.3 and noted an announcement asking for volunteers to test newly added support for the Oracle database.

Most open source, content management systems (WordPress, Joomla et al) use MySQL so it will be interesting to see whether there is much demand for a CMS running on an Oracle database.

On a similar note, Oracle are likely to confirm that the next major release of Siebel (8.0) will be available on the Linux platform. The official announcement is expected at Oracle OpenWorld later this month. This isn’t wholly unexpected as support for Linux in Siebel 8.0 was included in the public Statement of Direction (May 2006).

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celebrity watch

Last night as I waited for the baggage carousel to leap into action at Terminal 1, I heard a familiar voice speaking on his phone. I looked round and there was a very familiar face - the face of Michael Aspel.

Then I started thinking about all the celebrities and superstars I have seen over the years

Walked past Martin Buchan with mouth open (mine not his) on Deansgate.

Tommy Docherty signed a pack of MUFC matches for me in a Chinese restaurant in Wilmslow.

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Here we go

The mySql database for this WordPress blog was unavailable at 18:45.

Service was restored at 19:15.

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is it really worth it ?

I have never heard customers complaining about the abysmal performance of the Oracle pseudo-table DUAL. Nor have I ever encountered a real-life performance issue that was attributed to slow access to DUAL. Rarely have I been asked to tune an SQL statement that was sub-second and took a massive 3 consistent gets.

Another reason I won’t be using this tip is that, a few years ago, I did encounter some unexpected, weird, obtuse behaviour in an Oracle system that completely baffled everyone. This was eventually tracked to the presence of not one, but two rows in the DUAL table.

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