Quarter Share
| Imagine a Stephenson-esque golden age of clippers, plying the trade routes through space on the solar wind in the far distant future. And the story of a young lad learning the ropes and working his way up through the ratings. Nathan Lowell's Quarter Share is the first of a trilogy set in this world, and drips with a sense of mercantile adventure and bonds of companionship. This is another great book available as a podcast download from podiobooks.com. I was sucked in by the details that Mr Lowell packs into the story of Ishmael Wang, Pip and the rest of the crew of the Lois McKendrick. Be it scrubbing the urns and tuning the grinder to produce the best possible coffee in the galley, or the intricacies of balancing Ish & Pip's trading portfolio. Loved the book. It has a great feel-good factor, since in this first volume we go along with Ishmael's gradual rise-and-rise from greenhorn to well-loved and respected member of the crew. Gotta download the next volume, Half Share, PDQ! PS: Visit The Trader’s Diary for more information on the Golden Age |
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Open Source IT System Management and Infrastructure 2.0
Interesting discussion between Michael Coté and John Willis on this recent RedMonk Radio podcast. John's got some great insights about the state of Enterprise Systems Management, and its not all about a wholesale shift to OpenNMS and Puppet.
The "Infrastructure 2.0" buzzword enters the conversation when talking about the shift towards infrastructure/hardware/storage-as-a-service, along the lines of Amazon's Elastic Computing.
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Iron Coffin
| I really enjoyed this book by John Mannock. It adds to my collection of submarine books and movies. But Iron Coffin brings an interesting twist to the Das Boot-genre of WWII Kriegsmarine lore. The story commences with the discovery of a U-boat wreck in a Louisiana river delta and a chance encounter in a local bar with an old timer who can tell the story for the first and perhaps last time. How the disabled submarine sought refuge in the bayous and sought help from the Cajun river dwellers. And the surprising twist that explains why one of the sailors is left behind. Gritty, authentic detail and the unconventional story line make this a great read. |
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Oracle Database: Real World Scenarios - Troubleshooting and Tuning Seminar
If you are a serious database specialist in or around Singapore, I recommend you check out the Oracle Database: Real World Scenarios - Troubleshooting and Tuning Seminar that has been put together for Oracle University by Aat van Bart. It is running on 6th & 7th Dec.
Aat is one of my ex-collegues, so I know when he talks "real world" you can be sure this is the real deal;-)
This is one of a series of special events that Oracle University in Singapore have organised. Next is Steven Feuerstein's The Best of PL/SQL.
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