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Home » Monthly archive

April 2012

Wrath of the Titans…

Submitted by oraclebase on Wed, 2012-04-18 14:23

Wrath of the Titans has one clear advantage over the previous film. It’s not a remake of a film I have seen masses of times. That alone makes it a little more interesting for me.

It looks great, but it does seem to drag on at times. I came out thinking they should have cut about 30 minutes to make it flow better. Imagine my surprise when I found out the running time was only 99 minutes. :)

IMHO this is a “wait for DVD” film. Even then I would hold on until you can get it in a sale. It’s not bad, but it won’t rock your world.

Cheers

Tim…

Battleship…

Submitted by oraclebase on Tue, 2012-04-17 15:51

Where to begin with Battleship?

The good:

The bad:

Critical Analysis of “Critical Analysis Meets Exadata”

Submitted by oraclebase on Tue, 2012-04-17 14:53

Kevin Closson put out a post yesterday called Critical Analysis Meets Exadata, linking to two awesome videos. It’s well worth spending the time to watch these, even if (like me) you never get so much as a sniff of Exadata. :)

I was lucky enough to be one of several people asked to review these videos before they were released. I’m sure some of the performance gurus on the Oak Table had a lot to say, but of the several comments I fed back to Kevin, I would just like to post a couple here:

Critical Analysis Meets Exadata

Submitted by kevinclosson on Tue, 2012-04-17 05:44

If you are trying to find out more in-depth information on how Exadata architecture really works, I’m offering this video presentation to offer some critical thinking on the matter. It is broken into two segments. I do recommend watching both.

Critical Analysis Meets Exadata – Part I

Critical Analysis Meets Exadata – Part II

Statistics poll

Submitted by Timur Akhmadeev on Mon, 2012-04-16 20:55

Thanks to everyone for spreading the link and participating in the poll on statistics. As it was pointed out in the comments, the poll isn’t very specific, I know. My point was to get an idea how many people use the defaults (I considered Oracle version 11g) for stats collection, how many do a very simple and reasonable tweak to get more stable execution plans, and how many people prefer custom statistics management. Well, I think the results will not change much and here are as following (326 votes at the time of writing):

Information exchange

Submitted by Timur Akhmadeev on Mon, 2012-04-16 19:51

This is a short note on the topic of information exchange. I use OraNA.info to get up-to-date technology news. This is a blog aggregator I’ve tried first and have been using it since then, which is 3-4 years I guess. It’s great :) and I’d like to use this opportunity to say Thank You to Eddie Awad for a great blogs collection!

The Magic of Doing One Thing At A Time

Submitted by KarenMorton on Mon, 2012-04-16 18:35

I just read an article from the Harvard Business Review entitled "The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time" and thought it was excellent. I highly recommend reading the whole article (it's not long) but here are a few "policies worth promoting" from the article:

1. Maintain meeting discipline.
Among other things, this includes starting and ending meetings at a "precise" time and insisting that all digital devices be turned off throughout the meeting. Amen!
2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day.

The Cabin in the Woods…

Submitted by oraclebase on Mon, 2012-04-16 15:06

The adverts would have you believe The Cabin in the Woods is a “Game Changer”, “Astounding” and lots of other things that would make you think you are about to witness something that will change the course of movie history. That fact is, it’s just another teen slasher movie. It’s quite a good one as it goes, but there is nothing revolutionary here. I could have been watching any of the Scream films and it would have been pretty much the same experience.

If you like teen slashers, I think you will like this. To get maximum enjoyment, avoid any trailers, reviews with spoilers and hype.

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 16, Nouveau Driver and GNOME 3…

Submitted by oraclebase on Sat, 2012-04-14 12:54

I did an update of the my Fedora 16 machines this morning and I’ve got GNOME 3 back in full effect, rather than the fallback option. It seems the updated Nouveau Driver was included in the update, so I don’t have to wait for Fedora 17 to get me back on GNOME shell, and I won’t be requiring software rendering of GNOME shell when I do upgrade. Happy days…

Cheers

Tim…




Repairman Jack : The Haunted Air…

Submitted by oraclebase on Fri, 2012-04-13 20:04

The Haunted Air is the sixth book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.

It seems the world is quite literally going to Hell and Jack is one of the few people that might be able to stop it. This latest adventure sees Jack getting drawn into investigating the ritual killing of children, phony mediums and a ghost interfering in his private life.

On the plus side, the book was well paced and I was desperate to know what happens next. On the negative side, the content is really heavy and disturbing. There are elements that are very similar to one of the Felix Castor books, but with a much darker edge.