Posts

Paul Stamatiou, I salute you

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.

WordPress.com open up user forums

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.

not getting things done

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 !

Raptor is out of the cage

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.com adds a couple of themes

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.

WordPress.com improves statistics

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.

confession time

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.

issues arising

Doug Burns raises a surprising number of issues in a seemingly throwaway comment about music.

1. I used to say I only have three passions in life ‘Music, Football and Girls. The only thing that changes is the order.’ :-)

2. 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.

3. 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.

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detailed analysis of referer logs

Old news is like yesterday’s papers. No-one is interested.

The chart of failed spammers is as good indicator of traffic to your blog as any.

Old gems may totally get ignored depending on timing.

I might have one avid reader.

Lots of people are looking for information about ‘Dixons Tax Free Shopping’, ‘SonicStage 3.3’ (are you listening, Sony ?) and, oddly enough, ‘Paul Scholes + family’.

Google is a popular but sub-optimal search engine for blogs as monthly archives may contain a wide variety of unrelated content (Roy Keane, Antibes, Blog, Chameleons, DAB) which will ultimately confuse people and waste time.

hostelries in West Bromwich

Days Inn Hotel. No restaurant service ‘because it is Christmas’. No cooked breakfast ‘because it is Christmas’. No Sky Sports which is normally available but has been withdrawn ‘because it is Christmas’. Boddingtons is available despite the proximity of ‘Christmas’ at a very reasonable 2.95 GBP for a pint.

The Marksman hostelry, a mere half a mile away, but a little more earthy, has Sky Sports at every booth and on big screens and sells Stella Artois for 2.20 GBP per pint.