The ORACLE-BASE Blog http://www.oracle-base.com/blog Oracle related rants (and lots of off-topic stuff)... Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:48:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Captain Support… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/09/02/is-it-a-bird-is-it-a-plane-no-its-captain-support/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/09/02/is-it-a-bird-is-it-a-plane-no-its-captain-support/#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:40:08 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1517 I’m starting to think I’ve made a move into the PC support business, without wanting to or being paid for it…

Over the last couple of weeks my brothers laptop (one of my old ones) has been acting a bit strange. Nothing I could put my finder on, but something was not quite right. Yesterday my “Support Senses” started to tingle when I noticed some files and directories had become read-only for no apparent reason. A meer mortal might have considered trying to diagnose the problem, but this looked like a job for Captain Support. Quicker than a flash Captain Support did a fresh backup of all the photos and documents, then wasted that no good son of a… Dell.

Several hours and many Windows updates later there was a fresh copy of Windows Vista installed. Piece and harmony returned to the world. Captain Support even remembered to configure the VPN connection so his brother could connect to work.

Cheers

Tim…

Captain Support is the ongoing tale of a science nerd who was innocently sequencing sex-incompatibility genes in Brassica oleracea (wild cabbage) when he was spiked by the pins of a radioactive “i386 DX2/66″ chip, transforming him into a PC support superhero.

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/09/02/is-it-a-bird-is-it-a-plane-no-its-captain-support/feed/ 0 Where can I download CentOS 2.1? http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/30/where-can-i-download-centos-2-1/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/30/where-can-i-download-centos-2-1/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:42:00 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1515 I need to download a copy of CentOS 2.1 (x86), but I can’t find it anywhere. I’ve been down the list of mirrors and they all list 2.1, but then have an empty tree below it.

If anyone knows how I can get hold of it please drop me a line.

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/30/where-can-i-download-centos-2-1/feed/ 2 Homeostasis… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/30/homeostasis/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/30/homeostasis/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:07:29 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1512 Over the last few days life has been giving me a little reminder about the usefulness of Homeostasis…

On Wednesday afternoon I felt a little under the weather and by the evening I was throwing up in a big way. Eventually the effort of it all drained me to the point where I fell asleep. By the morning I was feeling much better, or so I thought. For the most part the vomiting had finished, but it seemed like my body had totally forgotten it had a homeostatic mechanism for regulating its temperature. I had the usual stuff you get when you are ill, like cold sweats one minute, then feeling really hot the next. The difference this time was I seemed to react really quickly to the temperature of food and drinks I consumed. If I ate some hot (temperature, not spicy) food I would quickly start sweating like a racehorse. Have a cold drink and it would be uncontrollable shivering. Kinda freaky.

For the last few days I’ve been cycling between bed, hot baths and the computer. I think I managed my body temperature pretty well if I do say so myself.

Today is the first day the whole temperature regulation thing seems back to normal, but my throat feels a little dodgy. The joys of secondary infections. :)

Cheers

Tim…

PS. This blog post is sponsored by Lemsip. The universal cure-all. :)

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/30/homeostasis/feed/ 2 PL/SQL Vs. Oracle JVM: Speed Comparison for Mathematical Operations… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/28/plsql-vs-oracle-jvm-speed-comparison-for-mathematical-operations/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/28/plsql-vs-oracle-jvm-speed-comparison-for-mathematical-operations/#comments Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:50:56 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1507 I remember hearing someone talking about this years ago and I never actually took the time to check it out. It looks like the real answer is “it depends”. For the basic loop processing and maths the JVM does look a little faster. It was just a curiosity thing, but I thought I might as well write it up as an article on the website.

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/28/plsql-vs-oracle-jvm-speed-comparison-for-mathematical-operations/feed/ 5 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/27/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/27/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo/#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:40:15 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1505 A few friends mentioned “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo“, but the title screamed Chick Lit to me so I avoided reading it until now. Well, it just goes to show you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover/title.

It’s a down-and-dirty detective story with some rather grim elements, but it’s really engrossing and a proper page turner. Considering my usual trauma when moving between authors, I took to this effortlessly. Maybe I’ve finally learned to read… :)

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/27/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo/feed/ 2 APPEND_VALUES Hint… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/27/append_values-hint/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/27/append_values-hint/#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:24:14 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1502 The APPEND_VALUES hint is new to 11gR2 and allows you to use direct-path inserts from “INSERT INTO … VALUES” type statements. Pretty neat if you are doing inserts in a FORALL statement and need the extra punch.

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/27/append_values-hint/feed/ 0 SQL Developer and MS SQL Server… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/sql-developer-and-ms-sql-server/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/sql-developer-and-ms-sql-server/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:22:38 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1498 This afternoon I’ve been cleaning up some data in an SQL Server database. I decided to use SQL*Developer to connect to SQL Server by following this post.

I made liberal use of the following tip when dealing with TEXT and NTEXT types.

The joys of dealing with multiple engines…

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/sql-developer-and-ms-sql-server/feed/ 0 Broken(ish) Links… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/brokenish-links/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/brokenish-links/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:40:18 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1496 A couple of days ago Sten Vesterli tweeted about the URL changes on OTN. The previous base URL of “http://www.oracle.com/technology” has been replaced by “http://www.oracle.com/technetwork“. There are redirects in place, so for many of the top level pages this isn’t a problem, but some of the deeper links result in “page not found” errors or redirect to rather generic pages.

Fortunately, most of the links from my site are to the Oracle docs, whose URLs haven’t changed, but there are also plenty of OTN links. I’m trying to clean up the problem links, but it’s going to take a little time. If you spot any broken links, or links that don’t look like they point to the intended information, feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to sort them.

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/brokenish-links/feed/ 0 OakTable… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/oaktable/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/oaktable/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:11:43 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1492 I was recently nominated and approved as a member of the OakTable Network .

Do you ever get that feeling that one day people are going to realize you don’t have a clue what you are talking about? I think that day just got a little closer. :)

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/23/oaktable/feed/ 19 More PC support… http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/22/more-pc-support/ http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/22/more-pc-support/#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:36:14 +0000 Tim... http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/?p=1486 One of my Yoga buddies was given a laptop by is dad and wanted to get it connected over wireless. His dad also gave him a wireless ADSL router, but couldn’t get it set up.  This sounds like a job for Captain Support…

The router wasn’t able to connect to the internet. It turned out that the router was not working properly and needed a firmware update. Next issue was the wireless connection between the router and the laptop was kinda funky. The connection would never work when any form of encryption was turned on. In the end I had to turn off encryption and stopped the router from broadcasting in an attempt to reduce the chances of people piggy-backing on it.

How are normal folk meant to cope with this? The answer is they don’t and they need Captain Support… :)

Cheers

Tim…

]]> http://www.oracle-base.com/blog/2010/08/22/more-pc-support/feed/ 3