Coopers Consulting Solutions Limited

A while ago now the UK mobile phone operator Orange announced that they would be starting to sell the iPhone (as soon as the UK exclusivity deal with Vodafone had ended).

As a business customer of Orange I registered my interest in having one. For the last 3 years I have been using a Blackberry 8800 on the Orange network. To be honest I have been very happy with it; it has been a useful tool to have with me on the road and out on client sites. So happy with it that I guess the only thing that would make me give up the BB is if I had chance to swap it for an iPhone.

Anyway a few weeks ago the telephone call came through from the Orange Business Customer Services team, and I duly jumped in and bagged a 32gig iPhone 3Gs. The upgrade deal being offered was exceptionally tempting (especially the all-inclusive data usage), and the 600 monthly minutes of inclusive talk time, and 200 texts, per month over an 18 month contract was no dearer than my current BB tariff.

And so a week later that magical white box arrived and thus started my journey into iPhone ownership.

I’ll admit that I was prepared for some degree of upheaval. The act of changing handsets is never easy, and switching from the BB to the iPhone did mean I was forced to re-evaluate my Contacts database before executing the synchronisation. This proved to be a bit of a cleansing moment, enabling me to break free from the many hundreds of accumulated numbers of people that I have not spoken to in years, of purging old saved numbers for people who have long since changed numbers.

However it would seem that that was the easy task….

Once I had my new phone updated with a (now) streamlined contacts database, the full reality of what I had done began to sink in.

First to hit home was the loss of my custom ring-tone.

I am happy to admit that I did not get into the big “ring tone download” scene that seemed to sweep the UK (and probably elsewhere) a few years ago. For a while (with my much older Nokia and Motorola Flip phones) I had simply hacked down an MP3 of a particular favourite Beastie Boys track and uploaded on the phone. It became my own ring tone (a sort of trade mark or signature tune) for my phone. And so I happily ported it between handsets, with it eventually ending up on the BB.

But now it was gone.

Second thing to hit home was getting to grips with the text-entry interface. I’m not sure who was ultimately responsible for the design, but I assume that they were a nimble-fingered person, whose digits were pointy and precise! I may be middle-aged, but my fingers have yet to descend into resembling some of Walls’ ™ finest! However I still found the entry of text to be painstaking! The margins between hitting the right “key” and the wrong one appear to be wafer thin.

The final home truth was the “single application running” (I’m sure there is a better turn of phrase for this).

Sure, its primary duty is a phone. And wow, the email facility does seem to run in the pseudo background. But the dawning reality of it all was, if I switched from my Twitter App to email or some other app, I would not get any further notification of new Tweets. Come on now Apple! Even my beloved BB was capable of supporting multiple processes running concurrently. The push email was superb, and the Twitter application would happily sit in the background and wink the little “red eye” when new tweets came in! Moving over to the iPhone was like moving from a polyphonic keyboard to a the Stylophone ™

Maybe they have all this technology and capability, but wish to drip feed it to the public, forcing regular upgrades, thus perpetuating the revenue streams….

Anyway, the deed is done. I have made my bed, jumped onto the iPhone bandwagon, and will have to lump-it-and-like it. I’m sure it will grow on me. But for now I will refrain from selling-on my old BB handset and hang onto it just in case of emergencies.

This weekend signals the end of Metalink.

Some will cheer “good riddance”, and welcome with open arms the new all-singing, all-dancing, “My Oracle Support”. Others, like me, may reflect on the demise of a stalwart of Oracle’s public-facing persona’s

With it’s configurable widgets, and shiny colours, the new Oracle Support site certainly conveys a sense of modernity that simply did not exist with Metalink. But then Metalink harks back to a bygone era of the Web, where functionality and form were the key attributes of a web site; where the phrase “user experience” was just a glint in the PR-man’s eye; where the key aim was to accept input, process and return results in a simple manner, with no thought to making the output pretty, or integrated, or encapsulated in Web 2.0 bubble wrap.

Sure Metalink had its foibles. The fact no matter how many times you set-up and saved your preferences in the “My Metalink News” option, the new items never seemed to fully reflect them. Or the fact that the search facility required an eccentric and devious turn of phrase to construct a search criteria that would actually bring back the results you really wanted, rather than just 100 hits of pages with a loose affiliation to some of the key words.

Nevertheless, it was used by countless thousands of users, managers, developers, hackers, day-in day-out for what seems like a lifetime. A constant companion and resource in an ever-changing world of technology.

I know Oracle have been pushing us hard over the last few months to ‘upgrade’ to the “new experience”, however i cannot be the only one who persisted in  checking the “use classic interface” option whilst logging in?

I’m also sure i cannot be the only one, who in the last few months run-up to this weekend’s big switch-off, have extended their use of 3rd-party sites, forums, blogs and even Google, in a bid to seek enlightenment, rather than tangle with the new beast.

Perhaps this is the price we must pay for “progress”. I will miss the ‘old fella’

Farewell, and good bye, to Metalink. You have served me well.

This harps back to an earlier blog about being spoilt for choice regarding which laptop i was going to take with me on my jaunt to Vegas (ostensibly to attend the Oracle HCM User Group).

Anyway, through various methods of deduction, i had opted to take my Dell Vostro – a behemoth of a machine running CentOS, loaded to the gills with development tools and a full install of Oracle EBS R12.

However…I have been thinking about this during the week. I think i will not get as many opportunities to do some development work as i thought i would, principally because the OHUG agenda is chock-full of interesting sessions to attend.

So, i have had a late change of mind. How late? Well its 21:15pm the night before i fly.

I have decided to bin the heavyweight development box and instead travel with one of my Acer Aspire One’s. I shall take the HDD one (which has 2 flavours of unix) rather than the SSD version. The main reason being the SSD version is not as sturdy (i’ve had the OS go AWOL on it a few times in recent months – each time has required a full restore).

Anyway. I’ll still be able to Blog, Tweet and email

Until next time.

I just had to post this – it’s so amusing to the code-monkeys out there.

Its a post (repost in fact) by Roedy Green, from Canadian Mind Products. I came by it by way of a Tweet from Eddie Awad. It’s essentially a tongue-in-cheek article on the best ways to not write code, or (if you would like a job for life) the best way to code to prevent anyone else from understanding it.

The sad thing is that i’ve been guilty in the past of producing code following many of these rules without even thinking about it.

Anyway, the article in full is here. Enjoy it…I have…

Oh the dilema of choice!

In just under 2 weeks time i am flying out to Las Vegas to attend this years Oracle HCM User Group conference (OHUG). I’m planning to take one of my many laptops with me so that i can do some of the following:

• Keep on-top of my email
• Keep an eye on the HRMS Aces forums (as an Admin)
• Keep my Blog up-to-date
• Download and view any photo’s that i happen to take with my camera
• Work!

The last point is the stickler. The conference runs for 4 days, plus a 5th-day invitee-only CAB day (to which i am invited). As i shall be out there for 7/8 days i am bound to have some downtime (ie non-attendance of conference sessions). I’m sure that some of this ’spare’ time will be taken up with activities such as:

• Sleeping
• Drinking Socializing with my fellow conference attendees
• Shopping – although probably not too much
• Sight-seeing – again probably only on my last full day
• Relaxing by the pool in the Hotel

Whilst i do not have any ‘client-funded’ work to do during this time, i do have significant amounts of ‘non-funded’ work to be done, some of which will hopefully lead to funding, and some of which will simply be to further my own corporate cause. It is therefore this point that causes the ‘travelling hardware’ dilema.

If it were simply the case of Blogging, photo-viewing, web-mail reading etc, i could probably get away with taking one of my Acer Aspire One netbooks; I have 2 of them – one has 1.5GB RAM and the 8GB SSD, still running the standard Linpus install but with XFCE as the desktop client. The other has 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD and is dual-booting (with either custom Linpus Lite or Ubuntu Netbook Remix). Both of these are capable of meeting most of my requirements.

However by throwing “work” into the mix, i am forced to consider a wider range of hardware options:

• Dell Inspiron c/w 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD
  This is my “Windows” workstation – its running XP SP3, and has a full install of Oracle EBS 11.5.10.2, plus Workflow builder and JDeveloper 10g. Plus the usual MS Office suite thrown in for good measure.
• Dell Vostro c/w 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD (dual 250GB drives)
  This is my main Linux machine – its running CentOS 5.3, has a full install of Oracle EBS 12.0.2 (as previously blogged here), plus is running OO3, Zend Studio Developer IDE, XAMP. Its also got JDeveloper 10g installed (but i’ve yet to get it to work). And just for good measure i also have Sun’s VBox VM software with a full Windows XP VM
• Finally i have the machine which i am currently sat at writing this Blog. Its my aging, but trust, HP Pavilion. This has 2GB RAM, 120GB HDD (which is fairly full i’m sorry to say)
  This is running XP SP3, Zend Studio IDE, JDeveloper 10g, plus a whole host of other net tools etc. It also houses my Photoshop CS2 install and my document reference library.

I can probably discount the HP Laptop for starters. It’s over 4 years old, so the battery does not run for much more than an hour before giving up the ghost. In addition, its my main corporate machine, so is packed to the gills with all my company paperwork, spreadsheets, invoices etc etc. Its also my main email archive machine, so have Outlook PST files with email data running back over 15 years (you never known when you might need that Oracle 8i tuning tips email). It’s like an old friend, and is safer staying at home.

So that just leaves me with the 2 Dells.

If i were after total compatibility and comfort, i’d probably plump for the XP Inspiron. Its a smaller machine physically (its not the 17″ widescreen Behemoth that the Vostro is), and is likely to fit in with any wired/wireless networks i’m likely to encounter whilst travelling. However, it does not contain half the web-development toolkit stuff that i have mainly because its essentially my Oracle EBS 11i development and demo system. The full install does not leave much room for much else.

So we are looking at the Vostro then. Its big, its shiny black with a humongous widescreen pannel. It does have most of what i need, but does have its foilbles…

• It’s much happier running wired network (it has a Gigabit Ethernet card) than wireless. The wireless drivers are a bit hit and miss – i often have problems at home with it.
• It runs very hot when in use – again this is because the OS does not fully support the Active Power Management hardware properly – and when i say hot i do mean hot hot hot.
• The trackpad is not to my liking (even though i’ve tweaked its setting to the best i can).
• The powerpack is a bit of a brick

So it does look like the Vostro edges it.

Thank you for listening, i’m glad i had the opportunity to talk this through with you.

This was not my idea. Not my idea at all. If i’d had my way i would steer clear of social networking altogether.

It was an idle (almost throw-away) suggestion by my better half that i should set up a Twitter account so that i could “Tweet” whilst i’m on my jolly attending the OHUG Conference in Las Vegas in June. That way she would know that i was not gambling the night away in a beer-fuelled frenzy with my respected peers

On the face of it, it’s probably not such a bad idea after all. I mean i will be armed with my laptop during the 8 days i’m out there as i do have some work to do, however firing it up in order to hand-craft some length blog posts about the various conference sessions i’ve attended may not be that practible in reality. Whereas armed only with my Blackberry, i could provide regular bursts of 140-character summaries of the days events, as they happen.

So this is what i have done. I’ve created myself a Twitter account, and (heaven forbid) even gone as far as linking it into here (my blog). All that is left to do is to test the tweet-by-SMS facility (which i will do as soon as i A-think of something to tweet about, and B-go somewhere other than home that has a decent mobile signal! UPDATE: Using the Blackberry equivalent of the iPhone AppStore i’ve found an excellent app called Ubertwitter – essentially a twitter app right here on my blackberry! Works a treat too!

Anyway, enough said – things to do…

A dangerous thing the internet is…

Working in IT as i do (and as i have done for all of my working life) i have often leapt with open arms onto new technology. Often this took the form of buying into gadgetry, often at great expense, and often only for a short-lived buzz of excitement… Who remembers the Iomega Zip Drive? Or the Creative DAP Digital Music Player, or even the Philips Pronto (or Marantz RC7000) all-in-one programmable remote control? I do…I did buy these things (more or less as they came out)…I did use these things, even when they were not quite fit for purpose (the Iomega was restricted to its proprietry media cartridge system, the DAP had a mere 6gig of storage, and the Pronto was ludicrously difficult to program)…

Other times i have been slow to adopt (or conform as many of the younger generatation would see it). Having burnt my fingers on the Creative DAP, i studiously avoided joining the iPod generation until they brought out a unit with (what i considered to be) a sensible amount of storage. When they did bring out such  version i had no further cause to delay (i am the proud owner of a 160gig iPod and have it chock-full of music – no photo’s just music).

Anyway, this brings me to the general gist of today’s rambling… Web 2.0… Specifically the cult of revealing ones life – full story and pics – to the general masses of the internet public.

I’m happy to say that, until very very recently, my only foray into this culture was by way of “Friends Reunited”. I have (and am proud to admit it) avoided the need to do “Myspace” or “Facebook” or (heaven forbid!) “Tweet”. I work all day with IT – mainly designing, writing and testing code in a variety of languages, and cannot think of any event during my working day that would warrant any form of continuous updating of my life to the general public. Who in their right mind would be interested in it anyway (other than my pay masters – and i suspect that if they saw a continuous stream of twitterings or other nonsense during the working day then they’d be inclined to worry about my delivery deadlines rather than how my day has gone).

However it would appear that the rest of the world moves on, and these things are ‘in’ and popular, and people now regard me as being eccentric for not joining in with the general “2.0″ fun…Even my family appear to be heading down this slippery slope. I know for a fact that both my Wife and Son are “face-booked” (my term, i’m sure there is a proper term but just humour me please:) ). Beyond my immediate family i am aware that others within the blood-line are busy filling their days with all this stuff.

Am I worried? No. In fact i’m reasonably happy to let this sort of thing slide by – i have other things to do with my life. However as a token gesture to it all i have succumed to blogging. The Coopers Consulting Solutions site is back in action (having spent the last 2 years as a static page) and i have a large collection of notes and other information that will eventually get back-ported onto here.

And i’m not just talking about blogging as a business tool either. I have also finally gotten round to setting up our home website with Word Press, and configured personal blogs for both Wife and Son, to do with as they please. I too may well join in the fun, although i’m more inclined to play the voice of the Rabbits, Cats or even the Chickens that we own, than actually convey any information about my own life.

So you see my problem?

On the one hand, i refuse to join the Web 2.0 generation fully and properly, and use the frequent line of “I don’t have the time to indulge”… and on the other hand here i am blogging away on a Saturday evening (whilst waiting for the WP set-up scripts for the family blogs to complete in the background).

Anyway, enough of this guff. Normal service will be resumed in due course, and the content of articles published here will revert back to business.

Thank you for your attention – no go away and get a life