- Joomla! 1.5 has been released and installed over here.
- Drupal 6 hasn't been released but that didn't stop me upgrading this blog to 6 RC2.
- I never thought I would say this but I think I am starting to get Twitter. Blame Tim Hall.
- FTP - Siebel had an FTP site for exchanging files with customers. Oracle has an FTP site for exchanging files with customers. Unsurprisingly, Oracle are standardising on the latter. I simply can't believe how much time I have
wasted spent helping intelligent people crossing this chasm. - The Europa Hotel in Belfast was the 'most bombed hotel in Europe.'
Siebel customers (and employees alike) all over the world are busy enjoying
Metalink3 which has recently replaced SupportWeb.
Everyone (well me, mainly) is taking great delight in taunting Oracle DBA types with incredulous cries of 'Sorry - did you say you're still on legacy Metalink2 ?'
A number of readers, impressed with this bleeding edge technology and dying for more, have emailed me asking why this humble Siebel
blog hasn't yet been updated to Drupal
6.0 RC2.
Consequently, I downloaded the distribution for Drupal 6 Release Candidate #2 and, unusually for me, I even took the time to read 'UPGRADE.txt'. I followed the instructions therein and took the site offline so any visitors receive a configurable, professional looking message: 'This site is being upgraded to bleeding edge CMS technology. Please spread the news and don't forget to taunt any Oracle DBA's.'
After that completely unnecessary configuration change (I have no visitors), I was then unable to login to initiate the upgrade. Sigh. Thankfully, I discovered this
article from another early adopter which enabled me to regain control of my original site.
I attempted the upgrade from Drupal 5.3 which failed to modify the database schema and produced a worrying number of SQL errors.
Not to be defeated, I read this helpful
article which implied the Drupal 5.x system should be running the latest stable release (5.6) which seemed eminently sensible advice.
I quickly upgraded from Drupal 5.3 to 5.6. Only I couldn't because my site was now inaccessible after the partial, incomplete upgrade so I had to hold my breath while I restored from yesterday's MySQL database
backup which worked perfectly.
Then I upgraded Drupal from 5.3 to 5.6, having naively convinced myself this would fix the problem, and duly repeated the upgrade process to 6.0 RC2 which promptly failed with the same dire, database related, results.
Still, this is a beta release after all and sure enough (as always), some other poor soul has already been
there and done that.
No fix yet. Roll on RC3.
It is just over six months since I first
placed banner ads on this blog and, much to my surprise, the accumulated income has just reached $100 (which triggers the first payment from Google).
As the introduction of
Adsense was purely an exercise to learn how the system works and experiment with different placements and formats, I have decided to donate all proceeds to a worthy
charity.
Answered by our roving reporter,
Kenneth. Posts by month. Draw your own conclusions.
Howard
When Tim Hall '
tagged' me, my initial, instinctive gut reaction was: God- what an infantile, puerile idea. There's no way I am going to participate in that '
meme'. The concept wasn't new to me as I'd already seen Scoble and those Web 2.0 PR types participate in similar mindless activities which I just chose to ignore.
However, my reasons for objecting were slightly different from yours. Normally, I despise being told what to so and what to blog about. Similarly, whenever my various employers announced a 'Dress down Friday' which was gleefully received by my colleagues, I would purposefully don a suit and tie. After all, a uniform on a Friday is still a uniform.
Secondly, the very thought of having to identify eight further victims to be tagged also filled me with dread. Not because I worried about OraNA being swamped with an exponential explosion and prolonged burst of non-technical content but, because, I feared the unlucky recipients may possibly share my feelings.
Of course, they could all maintain a dignified silence and simply ignore my pleas to join the party but what if they also hated this Web 2.0 'meme' but were too shy, polite and retiring to tell me what they really thought. I know a handful of 'bloggers' but have only met two in the flesh and (thankfully) slept with neither.
While I did discover some new blogs of interest, not necessarily because of the '8 things', I must admit that I quickly tired of hearing about people's job history, favourite cars, mental and physical disorders (mild or otherwise), alternative careers, wild death defying adventures and the fact they once killed a man with their bare hands in the Burmese jungle.
So why, I hear you ask, did I capitulate, run towards the cliff and conjure up a disposable blog entry titled '
8 things' ? Well, the truth is I thought it was a cheap post, I was short on inspiration and there was some elements I wanted to write about which don't merit a full blog post but were better suited to a short bullet point.
I followed your analysis, comments and thoughts with interest (for the first couple of days at least). I continued to read your blog, I tracked your
posts on c.d.o.s, I monitored your
comments on other blogs. When I saw your detailed analysis, use of analogies and various lengthy responses and compared with it my paltry, throwaway one-liners, I felt like a troll.
I occasionally
commented myself and you normally responded. Not, I suspect to get the last word but you genuinely care. A lot. I admired your passion and felt somehow inadequate that I had spontaneously chosen to respond to what some Oracle bloggers (unwisely IMHO) had termed a '
chain letter', '
spam' or a '
game'.
I am genuinely sorry that you have decided to shut down your site as (as I have stated before) your blog, forums and articles represent an invaluable set of technical resources for anyone working with Oracle.
I am sorry if my trite comment on your blog that I 'hadn't signed up to your terms and conditions when I started my blog' irritated you and may have, in some small way, contributed towards your decision.
However, just as it is your prerogative to close your site down, I have the same right to post about my travel nightmares, '47 things', my thoughts on Newcastle's new manager or Scoble's laugh.
Particularly, as my blog is not (currently) aggregated by OraNA and hence will not contaminate or interrupt the stream of consciousness.
Mind you, never say
never.
Andy
