For those of you that work with Oracle on a regular basic, some of the following blog sites might make some interesting reading:
- Tom Kyte, aka Ask Tom
- The Oracle WTF
- Think Oracle
- Oracle Sponge
- Oracle Performance
All posts by Alistair Lattimore
John Butler Trio, Homeward Bound
The John Butler Trio are currently on their Homeward Bound National Oz Tour.
On Sunday, it was Brisbane’s privilege to host the band at the River Stage. For those that don’t know, the Brisbane River Stage is a semi-natural grassed amphitheatre backing onto the Brisbane River. It has space for about 12,000-15,000 people in a mixture of sitting and standing.
I have had the pleasure of hearing the John Butler Trio play twice now. My first encounter was in 2004 at the Toowoomba Empire Theatre, for his initial Sunrise Over Sea tour. The atmosphere that a theatrical theatre provided was surreal, it was electric. Claire and I left the concert in total awe; we would have bought another set of tickets and gone back in to hear it all over again.
My second encounter was at the River Stage. Since it’s a large outdoor area, I didn’t think the concert would have had quite as much impact – I was wrong. The sound was excellent and loud, very loud. The River Stage would have been at close to capacity I think, with 10-12,000 people there. Everyone was well behaved, which was great and for the most part everyone remained seated (where appropriate) so that everyone could get a great view of the concert.
Andrew came with me this time, it was his first John Butler experience and he was thoroughly impressed with the talent on display. This first thing that hits you is the array of unique sounds he manages to draw from his guitars, superb. Once the first song or two are over, you then get to appreciate just how hard he is playing when he starts ramping up into some of the faster songs – wow. As the concert progresses, the other band members are taking more and more of a role, until at times they are the sole focus of the music and John is backing them.
Even though we were outside with a huge audience, John still drew you in. At one point, he unplugged the leads from his guitar, walked to centre stage and played Peaches & Cream into a single microphone. He asked the audience to try and remain quiet and it was, as before, brilliant. There was another instance where John was backing the drummer and he is literally urging the drummer to go harder and faster. That was a display of absolute percussion talent – I think everyone was lifting their jaws, the roar of the crowd when it finished certainly backed that.
The three photos were taken by Andrew on my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile:
There are songs on the Sunrise Over Sea album where John’s guitaring has you in awe, however as impressive as it is, it isn’t a scratch on what he delivers on stage. John has an absolute gift for the guitar, which is hard to explain unless heard live. If you ever get the chance to see him live at a town near you, I would whole heartedly recommend you purchase the best tickets you can get your hands on and enjoy the ride – pure brilliance.
Yahoo! Purchases del.icio.us
The ever popular social bookingmarking site del.icio.us has been purchased by Yahoo!.
Del.icio.us allows its users to create bookmarks, however since it is web based, they follow you everywhere. That in itself isn’t what makes del.icio.us powerful though, it’s the community driven aspect of it. People bookmark a site because it is useful to them in some way, so in short del.icio.us is providing a huge shortlist of excellent bookmarks cultivated by other internet users.
The site also allows its users to categorise their bookmarks and tag them. A tag is generally a very specific category, so while you might categorise something as programming – you might tag it as JavaScript, XML, CSS, and AJAX. The user specifies the categories and tags, so they are naturally grown – not specified by the del.icio.us team. As such, the categories and tags should make more sense to more people, as its the community that is powering the growth of the categories and tags. The more people link to a particular resource in their bookmark list, it increases the popularity of that link – in essence making it important in that group or collection of tags.
The acquisition of del.icio.us is the second such purchase for Yahoo! this year, after acquiring Flickr toward the end of March 2005. Flickr is a social image sharing website, where they allow their users to categorise and tag photos. Clearly Yahoo! can see an incredible market in the community or has a use for the tagging type nature of these sites as they supposedly paid between US$30-40 million for each of them.
Congratulations to the founders of both of these sites, it just goes to show what a good idea and some leg work can get for you.
Queensland Department Of Transport
In the first half of the year, I had the pleasure of visiting a Queensland Department Of Transport office. I turned up in my lunch break, with the expectation that I’d be in and out in a jiffy. What I was confronted with was an automatic ticketing system which seemed to be at a stand still and an ever growing number of people. The swift expectation was shot down when 20, 40, 60 and 80 minute markers lapsed while waiting to get served.
With the previous experience under my belt, I arrived at the Department Of Transport on Friday morning at about 7.40am. As expected, the office wasn’t open yet and it didn’t open until about 8.30am. What I couldn’t believe was that there was someone there before me! In the next hour, another fifteen people turned up to get in the door when it opened. Once the doors opened, the stream of people was unrelenting and by about 8.45am, there would have been close to 50 people waiting to get served.
When waiting for the office to open, I chatted to a man who works near by. He informed me that it was normal to have lines of people at that hour and that it got worst. Apparently in the 9am to 10am window, there are close to 100 people waiting in their office. To help with processing, there were two people in the public area of the office, trying to shuffle fast service queries through. The last time I was there, it was very busy but this was unbelievable. I wonder what it must be like in the lunch hour period now?
I think this experience has become common in many service industries. Companies and employers are trying to decrease costs but at the same time, they are frustrating their customers. You can turn up to nearly any bank, any time of the day to find the same scenario – 15 tellers and only 3 of them are active. Meanwhile, the queues continue to grow and customers become more and more frustrated.
It surprises me that more companies aren’t turning to technology to ease the pressure. A vast portion of queries that people go to an office can be done online or voice prompted over the phone. To me, it’s about working smart, putting resources where you get the best return. Having a good quality, clear and functional website would reduce load on these offices by significant percentages. A normal website can service hundreds, even thousands of requests per second – no matter what sized offices you had, it’d be impossible to match those figures. The numbers are compelling, so what’s stopping them?
Instant Messaging
The other day, I saw a comment somewhere stating “instant messaging is the devil”. That got me thinking about how I use instant messaging and what it’s good and bad for. What follows is a short list of the key features I think are good and bad:
The Good
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The Bad
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What is interesting to me, is that two points show up as both a good and a bad feature.
Instant Delivery
The instant nature of instant messaging is amazing, as soon as you click send – its delivered. There is no lag or delay of any significance and you can undertake an instant message conversation at great pace; it really makes email seem slow and antiquated by comparison. When using my computer, I tend to leave things open. So, in the case of an instant message client – I sign in first thing in the morning and I sign out when I go home. The problem is, people can contact you at all times and the nature of the instant message demands your immediate attention. When at work, this can be a distraction for obvious reasons but more importantly, it leads to breaking concentration.
Convenient
Instant messaging is convenient, amazingly convenient. If you work with a computer regularly, you can no doubt type at a good pace. At which point, having the ability to instant message someone and hopefully get an immediate response is excellent. The problem, which is related to the instant nature as well, is that often you end up spending more time using it than you need to. You ask someone a direct question, you get an answer and what often follows is another minute or more of quick messages. The time adds up very quickly until your work time is just slipping away from you.
The Real World
At work, it was decided we shouldn’t be using instant messaging or IRC. I initially thought it was a poor decision, as we often gather a lot of fast response, good quality information through it. For instance, the fantastic support in the #postgresql channel on irc.freenode.net is invaluable at times, so is being able to contact other developers. However at work, you end up being messaged by non-work related contacts – which leads to spending a minute or two talking about something. Across the course of a day or week, all the minutes soon add up and you’re losing hours.
At home, I find it nearly impossible to get any work done when I’m signed in. You’re contact list assumes, since you’re signed in you must be available to chat. The same thing happens, a little chat here and a little chat there – soon enough you’re work hours are running out and your work isn’t getting done.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve found my use of instant messaging has been slowly declining, until now I often don’t sign in at work at all. It isn’t because work colleagues take up too much time, its the distraction and cumulative minutes here and there. A nice solution would involve grouping your contacts (like you can in MSN) and then allow a group to see you during the day. Using a mechanism like that, you’d at least be limiting your distraction to work related contacts – whom generally contact you about work related things.
When I’m using my computer, it is mostly about getting things done. I am fast building the view that free for all instant messaging isn’t conducive to that outcome at all. A similar opinion is close to being drawn about having your mail client open and auto-receiving mail for you; though the final judgment on that is still undecided.