Month: April 2009

What’s all the fuss about Ubuntu ?

Image by yum9me
Image by yum9me

I see that Ubuntu has released a new version of its desktop edition. It seems to be a very popular distribution although I haven’t used it myself much, but I might give this new version a try for a while.
I’ve used Red Hat a little and I was running a Debian server at home for a while. I know its not linux at all, but I kind of prefer Solaris 10. It’s what I use at work and what I’m most used to (aside from Windows). Although I will grant you, some things are easier to do in Linux. But Solaris feels like a real operating system.
Juscelino over at J.M.A daily has an interesting post about the 5 reasons linux will never be better than windows. I agree with most of what he says. Although many things about using and installing Linux has become easier over the years, Microsoft has spent and will continue to spend millions and probably billions of dollars developing software that is easy to use for as many people as possible.

Seven Essential Applications For Bloggers

Image by laRuth
Image by laRuth

I still a little new to this whole blogging thing, so I keep my eye out for anything that will help me out. Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger has a great list of Seven Essential Applications For Bloggers Using Windows.
They are

  1. Windows Live Writer
  2. Evernote
  3. FeedDemon RSS Reader
  4. Q10
  5. FileZilla
  6. FastStone Capture
  7. TweetDeck

The first application I tried was EverNote, and it’s great! It allows me to make a note of web sites and stuff easily for reference later on. I love it, I’m a convert.
To read more go to Darren’s post or continue reading to see my review of the applications I’ve used.
Continue reading Seven Essential Applications For Bloggers

Windows 7 RC1 Arrives May 5

Image by evitc
Image by evitc and Microsoft

Kevin Purdy over at LifeHacker reports that the Official Windows 7 Release Candidate Arrives on May 5th.
I managed to sign up for and get a beta copy and I’m also subscribed to the Windows 7 Team Blog so I’m hoping to get a copy.
I’m really only using it for my media center PC at the moment, but it works really nicely for that.
How about you, are you itching to get your hands on the RC version ?

TuneUp Your Music Collection


I found a program the other day called TuneUp that fixes all the song information (track title, album title & album art) for all your music in iTunes. I only tried the free 100 song version as I have already done most of my by hand now. But for the few albums I did do, it seemed to work reasonably well.
Although I didn’t get one album wrong. Unfortnatuly I didn’t realise this until after I had let iTunes change the album title. Oh well.

AlternativeTo Suggests Software Alternatives

Image by QiFei
Image by QiFei

Allot of software these days is very expensive, so I like to try and use Open Source software whenever possible. However it can sometimes be hard to find the right program.
However Lifehacker has a new post about a site called AlternativeTo, which offers Open Source suggestions to Windows, Mac and Linux applications. You simple do a search on your costly proprietary software and it will offer Open Source and freeware alternatives. Neat !

What is an Oracle Schema?

Steve Callan at DBASupport has a long artical on What’s in an Oracle Schema?.
While I don’t get this exact question much, I do see that some people get confused between a database and a schema. I create them a schema in a database, give them the user name and password and they think they have a database.
If I ask them if they need a schema or a database they aren’t sure. So usually I just get their requirements and then determine it for myself. Part of being a DBA I guess.
I usually ask them how many uses they need, how much space they need and the number of users or amount of load they are expecting. If it is all pretty low, then they probably only need a schema in an existing database. If they have high demands then their own database might be best.

Fixing the Backspace key in the UNIX shell

Allot of times when at the command prompt in UNIX, the backspace key doesn’t do what the backspace key should and instead simply put ^H’s on the screen.

Backspace
photo by thegareth

There are three ways to fix this:

  1. Use the delete key instead. Sometimes the delete is mapped to erase the first character to the left.
  2. Use CTRL+H to backspace. Sometimes simply using ctrl+h will erase the first character to the left.
  3. Use stty to map ^H to be erase, like this,
    # stty erase ^H

You can also fix it put configuring the terminal program you are using. Look for any options mentioning backspace or CTRL+H and turn them on.