Interesting topics while I was gone

Not surprisingly, the world still ticks - even when I'm on holidays.

I've finally caught up with my RSS feeds - the work related ones anyway - and I've compiled a brief list of those that caught my eye in particular. When trying to catch up on three weeks of feeds, the best reads tend to stand out.

Comparing Oracle & MySQL - this may become more relevant as time goes on, and will certainly be useful every time my MySQL friend asks me Oracle questions.
Oracle XE 11g - while I'm not waiting for it, that would be a useful release, particularly for those who want to tinker and learn from home.
asktom.oracle.com/tkyte - I spotted the loss not long after Tom jumped domains, so it's good to see all his reference scripts made available again.
Multibyte characters - I encountered this issue recently, but not because I was coding for another language. I was importing data files that contained characters that I wasn't expecting, so I had to consider width as Alex described even though I was substringing a particular length.
Unwrapping PL/SQL - It's amazing how many people are curious about this.
Apex & Web 2.0 - There are some great demo applications linked through here.

And as I write this my replacement laptop power adapter arrived - let's hope it works. No more excuses for me!

Global/Local Oracle Community Networking

Recently while doing a little web surfing & blog investigating, I signed up to Oracle Mix and Oracle Community (my profile and profile).

It's sometimes difficult to get familiar with a new forum/website, and at the moment it seems a little overwhelming. However the idea for the two sites suggest good potential - I was wondering if anyone out there could provide thoughts on their experiences?

1. Do you find it useful?
2. Have you used it as an effective tool?
3. What positives/negatives have you found?
4. Do you have a preference?
5. Are you happy to stick with an RSS blog feed?

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Twitter -> Google Reader

I was playing with google seeing what keywords would return my blog, and I saw Chris Muir mention my presentation on his Twitter feed.

Now I have chosen not to fall into the Twitter trap, but there are some feeds I wouldn't mind following, Chris being one of them (Doctor Karl being another!)

For those uninitiated into RSS aggregators such as Google Reader, you can subscribe to these Twitterers & read what they have to say without needing to sign up to Twitter.


Kinda like reading all their mail, I guess... I can't tell you if there is some sort of privacy option within Twitter that controls this, perhaps someone with an account can?

I recently subscribed to one that had what I thought was a sensational idea - As part of the 40th anniversary, NASA arranged a Twitter feed for the moon landing, so you could read what was going on as if it was happening real time today. It gave a wonderful sense of time and progression for those of us not around when it happened.

I think it's nifty.