machinehead

Sometimes we use words so often, we forget what it actually means. I recently used the word Kayu, but when asked to translate it, I wasn't quite able to give a literal translation. And appalingly, bablefish did not contain the malay-english translation. Anyway after a bit of searching, I realised that Ka yu mean wood in berhasa indonesia. However in Singaporean context, it basically means silly. I suppose when someone said you have a wooden head, it generally means that you are pretty dumb. I suppose the next evolution of the word has changed its meaning yet again when in football, an own goal is scored. we say , "goalie ka yu" also suggests that was some bribing involved in that goal as well apart from being rather silly. So there you have it. the effectiveness of common language and how the years have made a simple line so descriptive. A singlish guide can be found here . Its not as detailed, but does cover some of the more basic words.

I've just purchased a new antec smartpower 350w power supply for my pentium 3 for $70. A bit of an overkill you might say. Well my machine is up and running again, so i guess it paid off. It's meant to be a quiet power supply that uses only one fan during low utilisation and 2 only if it really needs it. However since boot, I noticed that the 2nd fan just kept on spinning. That makes me wonder exactly how much power i'm using to power this machine. Maybe it has something to do with the asterisk tdm pci card, 2 network cards, 2 hard disks, 1 cd writer, floppy, usb wifi dongle and soundblaster live platium with live drive. hmm. i'll be thankful once this monster gets migrated to the garage where it should be. Meanwhile, I will have to bear with its hrmmm, hrmmmm sounds. The loudest part being the internal hard-disk enclosure.

Not quite sure why my power supply died over the weekend, woke up on the saturday and realised there was no internet connectivity, only to walk to my linux router and discover that the green power light was blinking and there was no loud drone like it normally used to give. I had to repatch my workstation directly to the adsl modem in the garage. Gee I love my centralised patch area. No hassles of carrying computers around. Well, i guess thats the end of the power supply. stay tuned to find out what happens next.

Since I picked up the dell latitude d820 laptop with nvidia quadro nvs 120m. I made sure that the laptop display was as maxed out as it could be. After using various different resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 on a 15.4 inch LCD display. I decided that the only useable resolution that doesn't make you totally blind is the 1680 x 1050. Although I did manage to use 1920 x 1200 for the longest time until my wife complained she was going blind surfing, i suddenly realised that going slightly lower still allowed great productivity space without having to sit 6 - 10 inches sometimes. As i mosly make assumptions on whats on the screen, it didn't affect me that much, however maybe its time to revisit some emails :P. As for a desktop, just max out your monitor. With 1680 x 1050 now, I guess i wouldn't be able to vnc my desktop without scroll bars ;)

I'd see if i can do this in 4 steps Step 1) on the target database, SQL> alter database backup control to trace; Step 2) copy the trace file and modify to specify the new database name and the first line of the sql file and all lines after the create controlfile statement CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE SET DATABASE "NEWNAME" RESETLOGS Step 3) Copy cold back datafiles minus temp file and control file. Step 4) Make sure that the last 2 lines of the trace file is run SQL> ALTER DATABASE OPEN RESETLOGS; and also make sure that the temp tablespace is created which also happens to be the last line in the trace file Here is a proper how-to link if my steps didn't make sense: http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/paa/obe-mdb/html/DB_CPY.htm

the venue: the white tent next to the lake was the stage. while waiting We played though the sunset next to the lake which was quite nice. The sunset took approximately 30 mins and so did the gig.

SOA is probably the most hyped topic at this point in time. Its probably right up there with utility computing and virtualisation. I suppose this means identity management has taken a bit of a step down until the next terrorist attack. The move to service orientated archtecture seems a popular adoption of most critical system business still running on their stable legacy systems. The reason for this mostly being that its in a modular in stucture and easier to manage. Financial institutions with their most arcane technologies would find this highly desirable as it is then possible to stage out the development stages and control cost and scope with the proper management. Its funny how the currect hype topics seem to link so closely with one another and seem to compliment each other rather than contradict each other as much. My belief is that the reason why its so out there is to hide the limitations of the inherant problems with SOA. Scalability and performance. N recently mentioned perf...