Today marks 2 anniversaries for me. It’s my 40th birthday, and it’s exactly 1 year since I gave up eating chocolate.
They say life begins at 40. I’m staying in all day today because I don’t to be out in case I miss it… 
Cheers
Tim…
I read today that VirtualBox 3.0 has been released. In the past this wouldn’t have been a big thing for me because I mostly use VMware Server on my Linux box, but now I’m a MacBook owner it has more interest. I refuse to pay money for the crippled VMware Fusion on Mac, so VirtualBox is the obvious solution.
The Mac is starting to get under my skin. I’m currently writing this post on my Linux box and struggling. Why? I’m getting used to the Mac keyboard and the keys are in the “wrong” place on this keyboard. Also, having to change from cmd+c/cmd+v to ctrl+c/ctrl+v for copy/paste is hard work. I just stare at the keyboard for a second to try and figure it out. Funny how quickly a lifetime of automatically doing something can change in 2 weeks.
So it looks like my next PC will actually be a Mac, then at home I will be consistent. Oh no! It’s happening. I’m becoming an Apple fanboy. Aaarrrggghhh!!!
I’m still of the opinion that, looks aside, OS X is not better than Windows/Linux, it’s just different. It’s a nice kinda different, but not streets ahead as people would lead you to believe.
Anyway, enough musings of a Mac newbie…
Cheers
Tim…
The conference finished yesterday at about midday, so I went into town with Chris Muir and Marcel Kratochvil to check out the aquarium. I managed not to get sunburnt this time. Later we met up for some food and basically chilled out. I’ve added some more photos here.
I leave for San Francisco airport in a few minutes, then I have to look forward to an 11 hour flight, 2 hour wait, then a 1 hour flight. Lovely.
Thanks to the ladies and gents from OTN and the ACE program for getting me here and thanks to ODTUG for putting on a cracking conference. Not surprisingly, there was no mention of the new Oracle games console, which we are not allowed to mention…
Doing conferences is always a strange experience. They are a little daunting before you start, quite exciting while they are happening, then I get a post-conference lull. It’s like your brain says, “enough is enough”, and you close down for a few days. Having to travel home doesn’t help much.
Cheers
Tim…
I decided fairly early on that ODTUG would be an APEX conference for me. I’m trying to go to as many APEX talks as possible as a fact-finding exercise.
I’m a DBA and PL/SQL developer, so I don’t have a foot in either the APEX or ADF camp. I was expecting this conference to help me formulate some opinions on the relative merits of the technologies, but in actual fact it’s kinda confused me more. Why? Well, I’ve seen some really cool enterprise developments done in APEX, which look good and perform well. I guess I didn’t expect that and it certainly places a tick in the APEX box.
But then talking to some of the guys from the ADF camp, it seems the barriers to entry have been lowered substantially over the last few verisons, which makes that sound interesting too.
I think OpenWorld this year will be my ADF conference. Maybe at the end of that I will have a clear, but newbie, picture of both technologies and be able to say something intelligent about them.
All I know is, whatever method you choose for your developments you really need a PL/SQL API layer. Not that I’m biased of course.
I haven’t taken many photos, but the ones I have are here. They aren’t too good.
Cheers
Tim…
I spent the day in the Oracle ACE director’s briefing at the Oracle head office in Redwood Shores. We had to sign none disclosure agreements, so I can’t tell you all the “secrets” we were told.
Don’t tell anyone I said anything, but Oracle are releasing a games console. It looks amazing and will blow the competition out of the water. A hand-held version of the console is on the roadmap, but details are pretty sketchy.
Graphics and sound are “no-cost options”. The games controllers are shipped by default, but they are an Enterprise Edition option, so check your licensing before you attempt to play a game.
Remember, it’s a secret!
Cheers
Tim…
A few days ago I bought a MacBook Pro to replace my previous Dell laptop. It looks very pretty and for the most part I’m really happy with it, but there are a few things that are really annoying about OS X. The one that is bugging me the most today is File Associations…
You can associate a program with a file extension, but it doesn’t really work properly. If I associate an editor like jEdit or SQL Developer with the “.sql’ file extension, clicking on the file starts up the editor, but the editor doesn’t actually contain the file. I have to do a File > Open, which kinda defeats the object of a file association.
I’m at an Oracle ACE Director briefing at Oracle Headquarters in Redwood Shores and there are loads of Macs around, but I’ve not found anyone who can get this to work yet.
A close second to this is the warning messages when you click a file link in a PowerPoint presentation. On Windows this produces a warning message, but on OS X it produces two warning dialogs. I’ve Googled this “feature” and I can’t find a sensible solution on Office 2008.
So I’m currently in a position where I can’t seemlessly switch from my PowerPoint slides to example code. I have to manually switch to the editor and open the file. Very annoying.
I’m a Mac newbie, so if anyone knows anything about either of these issues I would love to hear from you.
Cheers
Tim…
Q: Why should I leave early for the airport?
A: Because your taxi might be in an accident and you might get your bags trapped in the boot!
I’m not hurt and I have my bags now. Getting on the flight to San Francisco in a few minutes.
Cheers
Tim…
It’s that time again where I check to see if Oracle installs on the latest version of Fedora. The result once again is yes, it does. The main website has the links to the articles. I would add links here only the browser on this internet cafe machine doesn’t support cut & pates.
When I get on a real computer I’ll put the links in this post as well.
This release of Fedora is probably quite significant as it is likely to be the base for RHEL6.
Cheers
Tim…
WordPress 2.8 has been released, so get upgrading…
Cheers
Tim…
Just been to see the surgeon for my 7 day checkup. He’s really happy/surprised by the recovery so far.
- Grip Strength: My grip strength is almost normal now. He was expecting it to take up to 6 months.
- Pain: Apart from the day after, I’ve had almost no pain. I’ve only used the pain killers when the itching of my eczema under the bandage has been bad.
- Stitches: The cut itself looked so good he sorted out the stitches a few days early to save me having to get it done at the GP. He put some paper stitches as a precaution, which I can take off in a few days.
- Range of Motion: He expected me to have some limited range of motion for a few weeks, but I have full ROM.
It seems my true skill in life is healing. I’m like a crappy version of Wolverine, without the claws.
The only downside is the scar looks so clean I’m going to struggle to convince people it was a shark attack.
Cheers
Tim…