Only In America ...

Rockdale USA. Police have initiated a program of placing a yellow sticker on your car if you happen to have left valuables on display. The sticker warns of the dangers of leaving valuables where thieves may see them.

Of course if you happen to be a thief you can just target the cars with yellow stickers .... mmmmm ....

For the article see here.

"If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now." - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Would You Trust ...

Would you trust the UK Government to run a National ID Card Database ?

The recent loss of a disk containing 25 Million Child Benefit details is incredible. Not only did they lose the disk but they neglected to encrypt the information on it. It is quite possible to, very simply and cheaply, encrypt information in such a way that would make that disk worthless to anyone who gained access to it.

Instead, Bank Account details, Dates of Birth, National Insurance Numbers for millions of people are out in the wild. This should *never* happen. Ever. There is absolutely, categorically no excuse for this.

Pathetic.

"The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed." - Gordon Parks

Security, Slippery Slope ...

In October 2007 a law came into being that allows the government to force you to hand over encryption keys so that they can access your secured information. To the layman this is a necessary weapon in the war against terrorism, and that is exactly how it was sold to the public.

So why this month was this ‘Section 49 / Section 51’ law used to force a group of animal rights activists to hand over the encryption keys for their computers ?

A law that is only 2 months old and is already being used and abused by the powers that be. The ‘threat of terrorism’ is being used by both the British and American Governments to implement laws that would not be passed otherwise. Our personal freedoms are being eroded daily and most of us have not even noticed - yet.

Thanks for Bruce Schneier for revealing this.

"To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live." - Victor Hugo

Trouble with Oracle 10g on a VM

I have been having trouble until recently running Oracle 10G within a Virtual Machine environment. I have tried Parallels / VMWare / Virtual Server and Fusion. Always the same result, the database runs ok and maybe survives a couple of reboots, however sooner or later the database will refuse to start. The Operating System installed within the VM is Windows Server 2003 R2.

I have found a solution that works to restart the database successfully, although I have not yet found the reason for the problem in the first place. If you find yourself in a similar situation and you are presented with the following when attempting to connect to your Oracle Database:

ERROR:
ORA-01034: ORACLE Not Available
ORA-27101: Shared Memory Realm Does Not Exist

then this is what you need to do to start the database:

Firstly open the Command Line shell and perform the following (shown in bold):

C:\ sqplus /nolog
SQL> conn system/password as sysdba
SQL> shutdown abort
SQL> startup

Here is an alternative method that has also worked for me:

Create a file in the root of drive C: called startup.sql, these are the contents:

startup
exit

then create a file called Startup.Bat with the following contents:

c:\Oracle\product\10.2.0\<SID>\bin\sqlplus -s "/ as sysdba" @ c:\startup.sql

(Obviously replace <SID> with your database ORACLE_SID)

When you wish to start the database just run the startup.bat batch file.

That’s it. With luck your database with startup as required and all is well with the world. Now to find out why it happens in the first place ...

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." - Abraham Lincoln

Oracle: Flashback Query

The Oracle Flashback Query allows users to look backwards in time and see a consistent view of the database as it was sometime in the past. This facility is only relevant if your server is configured for Automatic Undo Management. How far backwards you can see is determined by the UNDO_RETENTION parameter (in seconds) which can be configured in the init.ora file or alternatively like this:

ALTER SYSTEM SET UNDO_RETENTION = NNNN

This facility is mainly used for recovering from accidental updates and deletes as it is not practical to set the UNDO_RETENTION to an extended period. Nevertheless it is a potentially very powerful facility.

"True humor is fun - it does not put down, kid, or mock. It makes people feel wonderful, not separate, different, and cut off. True humor has beneath it the understanding that we are all in this together." - Hugh Prather

Oracle: Flash Recovery

A new feature available in Oracle 10g is Oracle Flash Recovery. Flash Recovery is designed to make it easier and more straightforward to perform Oracle Backups and Recovery by providing a Centralised Location for all the files related to your database backup.

The Flash recovery Area is an area of a disk, or a separate disk, that is dedicated to the storage of database backup files and recovery information. It is held completely separate to all other areas of the Oracle database.

The Flash Recovery Area is used in the following ways:

Enterprise Manager can stores its backups here
Oracle can store the Archived Redo Logs here
RMAN can store and maintain details of it’s files here

In short: All files necessary to recover the database in the unlikely event of a media failure are stored as part of the Flash Recovery Area.

The default location for the Flash Recovery Area is ORACLE_BASE/flash_recovery_area. The size of this area defaults to 2GB but can be altered as necessary.

I see the Flash Recovery Area as a simple but extremely powerful and useful facility within Oracle 10g. Only the naming is unfortunate, this is not to be confused with another new feature that came out with 9i, the Flashback Query or Flashback Table facility.

"Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story." - John Barth

Oracle: Startup Procedure

The Oracle startup procedure follows these stages:

NOMOUNT: The Instance Starts and the Initialisation Parameter File is read and interpreted by Oracle.

MOUNT: The First Control File is read by the Oracle Instance.

OPEN: The Redo Log Files and the Datafiles are accessed by the Oracle Instance.

"Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger." - Arnold Palmer

Oracle: What Happens When ...

... An UPDATE statement is performed.

The following is an accurate (if fairly simplistic) description of what happens when an UPDATE statement is executed against an Oracle database.


The data set for the update is taken from the DB CACHE.

The ‘Pre Change’ data is written to the UNDO CACHE.

The ‘Post Update’ data is rewritten to the REDO CACHE as a delta (a piece of data that contains enough information to reconstruct the original data). The ‘Post Update’ data from the UNDO CACHE is also written to the REDO CACHE (alternatively known as the REDO LOG BUFFER).

After a COMMIT is issued the LOG WRITER Process (LGWR) writes the REDO CACHE to the REDO LOG FILES.

If ARCHIVELOG is enabled then the ARCHIVER Process (ARCH) writes a copy of the REDO LOG FILES to an alternative destination(s) (Up to 10) before the REDO LOGS are reused.

The CHECKPOINT Process (CKPT) is called regularly and this ensures that changed data (dirty blocks) are written from the DB CACHE and back to the datafiles. In addition this process updates the CONTROL FILES.

“Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals — except the weasel.” - Homer Simpson

OTT Enduro !

I spent Saturday tearing around the Peak District riding a Yamaha WR250F Enduro bike. Hammering gravel lanes and boulder strewn descents has long been an ambition of mine and so I got in touch with Overlander Trail Tours (OTT) and booked a days guided session with one to one tuition. It’s a long and tough day which starts at around 08:30 and finishes at 16:30, over this period you cover approx. 100 miles of prime Peak District terrain.

It’s worth mentioning here that OTT are a very professional outfit. They stick to tracks that are legal and treat all other trail users with respect and often stop and talk to people on the trail which serves as good PR for the sport, so many idiots give off-roading a bad name and it was good to see that OTT do their best to leave people with a good impression. Mike my guide was excellent both at riding his bike like he stole it and also at promoting the sport in the best possible way.

The drive up to the headquarters of OTT was interesting, taking me past the famous ‘Cat and Fiddle’ pub where I managed to stop and get a few pictures of the sun rising over the Peaks, and of the fantastic scenery over the moors.

Photo1
Photo2
Photo3

Having looked at their homepage I kind of expected lots of terrain similar to that shown in the top picture, however as I discovered later there seemed to be more of the kind of the terrain shown in the second picture ... So it was that I was a bit bemused when I had to wear knee, elbow, shoulder, back and chest armour as well as armoured boots and hard wearing jacket and trousers - I felt a bit like Judge Dredd ! As it was I had good reason to be thankful for the armour ...

Crash Number 1 occurred after around an hour of riding, I was getting used to standing up over the bars letting the bike do its thing as we hurtled up a track over boulders and ruts and I was feeling good, maybe going a bit faster than my newly found but limited abilities needed, anyway, near the top of the track prior to a 90 degree bend was a large dip in the ground which I entered and shot out of with no front wheel on the ground to steer with ... the wheel touched down just prior to the handlebar guards and my shoulder impacting a dry stone wall. Which luckily collapsed and so absorbed most of the impact ... So with no damage other than a few scuffs (to the bike, not me) I picked the bike up and we carried on.

A fantastic part of the day was spent thrashing the bikes down the gravelly quarry lanes, with only a 3 feet high chicken wire fence separating us from the sheer drop on our left, it never felt overly dangerous though as the quarry roads, although loose gravel, were fairly smooth and these bikes are fantastic, their handling and braking is in a league of their own.

Later on I did my first river crossing which was fantastic and seemed to involve very little skill to be honest. Keep the revs up, the speed constant, relax and let the bike do it’s thing. One thing I learned from this day is that courage is key - lose your bottle and you lose the bike, tense up and you will soon crash, the bikes are so good that they require minimum input to control, small relaxed fluid movements and a pair of big b******s are key to having a successfull and fun time when riding hard offroad.

Crash Number 2 (the reason that I am still stiff as a board 2 days later I think) occurred in the last 30 minutes of the day. Hurtling up a rock strewn ascent, that we had actually descended successfully earlier that day, I lost control, twisted the throttle back by accident and shot out of the rut into the wall at the side of the trail. This wall didn’t collapse and with the bike on top of me and the smell of petrol I lay under the bike feeling rather sorry for myself. I suspect I lost concentration or strength or both as by this time I was shattered and that was the result.

Fortunately the only damage to the bike was a front mudguard snapped in two, which was not classed as a slight scrape and so I had to pay £30 to replace it. One of the good things about OTT is that your maximum financial exposure is £100 so even if I had written the bike off all I would have had to pay would be £100.

Here’s a photo of me post Crash Number 1 and pre Crash Number 2 ...

Following this incident we headed back to HQ, the end of a fantastic day. I will definitely go again. I’m still unsure whether I will buy my own bike and take it up as a regular sport but there is no denying it is a lot of fun and very good exercise. Definitely recommended ☺

“Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!” - Homer Simpson

Applying for an EHIC

The EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) is a replacement for the old E111. It allows you to receive medical cover, free of charge when traveling abroad in most parts of Europe, similar to what you are likely to receive in the UK. Applying for the EHIC is easy - but can be expensive.

A web search for EHIC gives a website which gives you a telephone number (0871 050 0508), and advises you that this will cost 10p a minute. This telephone number gives you a second telephone number (0906 120 2345) which costs £1.50 per minute ....

After £12 worth of phone call you are finally given a web address where you can apply - WWW.EHIC.ORG.UK. £12 to be told that ... the card may be free but when it costs £12 to find out how to apply ...

The website takes all of two minutes to complete, your name, address, date of birth and national insurance number is all that is required. Your card should then be received in 7 working days.

So, save yourself the expense and hassle and go straight to www.ehic.org.uk. You know it makes sense ☺

"Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends." - Czech Proverb