EXEC('call Schema.ProcedureName()') at LINKED_ORACLE_SERVER

Make sure you’ve enabled RPC on your linked server too.

Yeeeaah… Not so much.

Why do I think things will be fine? Because data is King. And those that know how to move data, and get data to the right people, in the right way, at the right time, will always have a job. So, maybe having your database servers in the cloud means we do not have to worry about backups, tape storage, etc. Fine, I don’t care about that piece of being a DBA anyway. But you are still going to need someone that understands the tools involved in making your systems and processes work efficiently and correctly.

The full article, found over at BaconBitsAndBytes.com, is a witty (and potentially NSFW/offensive) article by a smart DBA and I highly recommend following the advice.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the-sizzling-sound-of-music.html

Berger then said that he tests his incoming students each year in a similar way. He has them listen to a variety of recordings which use different formats from MP3 to ones of much higher quality. He described the results with some disappointment and frustration, as a music lover might, that each year the preference for music in MP3 format rises. In other words, students prefer the quality of that kind of sound over the sound of music of much higher quality. He said that they seemed to prefer “sizzle sounds” that MP3s bring to music. It is a sound they are familiar with.

That “sizzling” has always driven me nuts in the lower quality stuff.

I remember wondering what audiophiles were up to, buying extremely expensive home audio systems to play old vinyl records. They put turntables in sand-filled enclosures with elaborate cabling schemes. I wondered what they heard in that music that I didn’t. Someone explained to me that audiophiles liked the sound artifacts of vinyl records — the crackles of that format. It was familiar and comfortable to them, and maybe those affects became a fetish. Is it now becoming the same with iPod lovers?

I can’t totally subscribe to this hypothesis. Because vinyl records are analog, they play a continuous audio wave that includes a bit of warm fuzz and crackle. Whereas digital audio is a mashup of samples from the audio wave; the sizzle and hiss created from the gaps between the samples. You may get a little noise with vinyl, but at least cymbals will sound like they do in real life.

(via: Daring Fireball)

Thanks!

–Update–

Looks like it’s just a problem for people using Safari. I will have the issue fixed soon.

<geekiness>

Today I upgraded my WordPress (the open source CMS that powers my blog) from version 2.3 to version 2.5. I won’t go into the geeky details about what came with it, but I will say that its new media management works very well and allows me to easily upload pictures without using a plugin to customize things. Thumbnails for my pictures will now be a little bit larger…but that’s not really a big deal.

Overall I am very pleased with the improvements that they made to the admin interface and general architecture of WordPress.

</geekiness>

UPDATE: I also was digging through the settings to see if there had been any additions, and I found that I can adjust the default image thumbnail size. So now things are amazing.

Here’s the gist of it, for the geeks who care:

• Migrated site from my old host (IX Web Hosting) to my new host (Nearly Free Speech). This should increase performance on several levels. Faster page load speeds will be the most noticeable.
• WordPress upgrade from 2.1 to 2.3.3
• Updated my permalink structure from the default “Jordanogren.com/?p=123″ style to use just post names instead. Like this: “jordanogren.com/my-example-post”
• Removed RSS .92 and Atom feeds, and ditched Feedburner. Exclusively using RSS 2.0 now.
• Upgrade my Google Analytics scripts from urchin to pageTracker.
• Swaped out my UltimateTagWarrior plugin for some other plugins, because WordPress 2.3 supports tagging natively.
• Upgraded Askimet to version 2.1.4
• Made minor tweaks to my site’s theme. Mainly to the way archive and tag pages worked.

Everything appears to be working better than ever, so I will assume I didn’t make any mistakes.

IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY SUBSCRIBED TO MY SITE VIA RSS USING THE URL “http://feeds.feedburner.com/jordanogren/”
PLEASE CHANGE IT TO THE URL “http://www.jordanogren.com/feed/“.
Feedburner is redirecting the feed for 30 days, after that your toast.

If you notice anything strange, let me know, and I’ll fix it.

To find the current set of dock images navigate to:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app
ctrl click on dock.app and select “Show Package Contents”.
Then Navigate to:
/Contents/Resources/
Then dig through folder to find these 4 .png’s:
scurve-l.png
scurve-m.png
scurve-sm.png
scurve-xl.png

Now drag a copy of them to your desktop, whip them into Photoshop, and create your own custom dock.

After you have something wickedly awesome, make a backup of the original files, and then copy the edited ones into the Resources folder to replace the standard ones. Restart the dock with the terminal command killall Dock, and you should be all good to go.

My personal favorite customization, so far, is the smoke dock… which is sadly no longer available, though it wouldn’t be the hardest thing to make in Photoshop. Here is what it once looked like: http://gadgets.bligblog.com/5562/smoke-glass-dock/. One of my friends downloaded the .png’s for the ‘smoke dock’ before the site went down. I will try to get them up here.

Here are some other ideas for it:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/31/create-sky-and-wood-custom-dock/

If you make a cool design for the dock and want to share, link to me or drop me a comment, and I will add your link/site/design to the ones listed here.

Many people have complained about the new dock in leopard and all it’s eye candy… Personally I kinda like it except that it has way to much going on. The reflections from the icons are nice…but they conflict visually with the wavy, stylized glass line through the middle of it… add some more reflections from all other windows, a 3D tilt, and just a hint of shadow… and you’ve got some major visual anarchy going on.

Now being an artsy kind of person, I like sexy UI’s, even if they have visual features that don’t do anything but just look good. However, the Leopard dock is just annoying. They should have either chosen reflections, or picked the fake OS X glass look… but not both.

Anyway enough complaining…
Jordan.action.rant = False;

I have found the solution to the problem: Turn off the glass and discover the sexy dock hidden underneath.

This is actually fairly easy to do. Just open up a Terminal window and run this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -bool YES

and then restart the dock:

killall Dock

and BAM!

There’s the hot, new Dock.

If the new dock isn’t to your liking… simply run the same command again, except change the YES to a NO.

-Update-
A friend showed me this other dock hack today… If you like the 3D look, but want less anarchy…this is a good fix.
http://www.blambert.co.uk/smokedock/
-Update2-
This guy’s site is apparently not working anymore(my guess is that maybe his monthly transfer was used up?)… which is quite sad. Here is what it looked like: http://gadgets.bligblog.com/5562/smoke-glass-dock/
-Update3-
Well, the dock hacks continue. Read more here.

Also, since we are talking about pros and cons of Leopard, here are a few good reads…
DaringFireball.net – A good, solid review
arstechnica.com – A highly detailed look at Leopard
ThinkMac.co.uk – A funny UI rant
Macworld.com – A good pro/con review of features

And now, I have more for you.

Enjoy!

   
   
   
   
Alyson, Peter, and Brady (left to right), my fellow compatriots.


   
   

Microsoft Outlook 2007 decided to dump all my RSS feeds…which does not thrill me…
No worries…Apple’s “Mail” app, which comes with their latest operating system Leopard, can do the same thing now…and it works phenomenally with Microsoft Exchange.

Say goodbye to yet another Microsoft Product. I look forrward to the day when I won’t work for a company that uses Microsoft Exchange.

So now that I have all my feeds setup in Mail 3.0, I thought I’d share them with you all…

• http://amandacongdon.com/blog/ – Amanda Congdon’s blog
  • Amanda Congdon is the President of Oxmour Entertainment. She is a videoblogger, writer, actress and producer. You can watch and participate in her videoblogs on StarringAmandaCongdon.com and Wednesdays on ABCNews.com.
• http://www.apple.com/hotnews – Apple Hot News
• http://images.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/pr.rss – Apple Press Release
• http://vjarmy.com/ – Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog
  • Dan Dickinson is a 27 year old living in Astoria, Queens, New York City. He works in the odd intersection of collaborative tech and education. Writing about emerging technologies, New York City, gaming culture, and awkward anecdotes, his blog is updated only semi-frequently but always overzealously.
• http://daringfireball.net/ – John Gruber’s Blog
  • The web site of John Gruber, a Mac enthusiast, technology pundit, and writer. Daring Fireball hosts Gruber’s opinions in the form of a blog, and also some of Gruber’s software.
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/dilbert – Daily Dilbert Comic
• http://www.DonSalyards.com - My Econ Profesor’s blog…He hired me to build it for him…so I keep my eye on it.
• http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/ – Wired Magazine’s Gadget Lab blog
• http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/ – Musings on life, love, and the pursuit of good refried beans
  • This blog is a record of Lisa’s quest, and other food-related musings that befit a homesick Texan
• http://icanhascheezburger.com/ – lolcats tagged for your convenience(and also your lol*’s)
  • I Can Has Cheezburger is a site that gathers, organizes, tags, and captions what we hope is the most funny and slightly weird pictures of lolcats and lol* (other animals) from the Internet.
• http://indexed.blogspot.com/ – Jessica Hagy’s Blog
  • “This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.”
• http://www.jordanogren.com – Yup…you can actually subscribe to my blog.
• http://blog.wired.com/music/ – Wired Magazine’s Listening Post blog.
• http://guide.apple.com/rss/newarrivals.rss – Apple’s New product feed.
• http://www.nosheteria.com/ – Adrienne Handler’s food blog.
  • “I’m a food writer, food stylist, and personal chef. Originally from the California Bay Area, I am now charging my way through the culinary jungle of Manhattan. Although I do have other interests, I’m a remotely well-rounded individual, this site is about my life with food.”
• http://googlemac.blogspot.com/ – The Official Google Mac Blog
• http://www.paulrohde.com – Paul Rohde, a fellow photographer and web designer.
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/pearlsbeforeswine/ – Daily Pearls Before Swine comic.
• http://www.PeterBoysen.com – Peter Boysen, One sweet photographer (amongst his many talents)
• http://slashdot.org/ – News for nerds, stuff that matters
• http://www.the-back-porch.com/ – What would Jesus do on a saturday night?
• http://whyiesucks.blogspot.com/ – cause it does…
• http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/ – Cult of the Mac

So there you have it…time to feed on the feast of rss before you.

• You know you hired a good marketing firm when…
  everybody starts ripping off your ad campaign. Poor Apple…
  Scroll down to find the Apple vs. PC vs. Linux commercials
  www.novell.com…
  via: Cult of Mac
• Compensating for something??
  Hmmmm…that’s a really big aperture
  www.mobilemag.com
  via: Gadget Lab
• How ’bout a love punch in the face?
  Rant against being a total ass
  via: Dethroner
• How to save videos from YouTube, Google video, etc…
  This is killa…
  VideoDl.org
  via: Dethroner

So if you can think of a better name for this daily/weekly posting…just holla.

Without any further dissertation, I present to you: Wicked Url [said "earl"]

• The editor for this magazine should be fired…
  oops…
  http://englishrussia.com…
  (courtesy of: Dethroner.com)
• 30 Strangest Deaths
  Sometimes you just gotta wonder why the human race has made it this far…
  http://www.neatorama.com…
  (courtesy of: popurls.com)
• Free Software Foundation to Jobs: Be First to Drop DRM
  This is kind of an interesting issue. Jobs wrote an open letter, a little while back, that detailed his feelings on the matter of DRM (Digital Rights Management). Apparently the Free Software Foundation wrote a reply.
  Article – http://www.ecommercetimes.com…
  Steve Jobs’ open letter – http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
  (courtesy of: popurls.com & Apple.com)
• This is some sweet art…
  http://fraudwasteabuse.wordpress.com…
  (courtesy of: AmandaCongdon.com)