Monthly Archives: November 2013

Crazy intro to the instruments of a rock band

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in General, Music

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I came across a series of YouTube videos that give the history of different instruments used in a rock band (well perhaps except for the accordion), we are assuming that the series is yet to do the treatment for the synth.  Each video is between 5 and 10 minutes long. Each video is opened with the cheesiest music ever. But then things get better, a lot better.  Each video has the band with the instrument featured up front, with someone who has to stand like a complete plank whilst MTV like facts are layed onto the board hung over their shoulders.

The band then play the instruments, changing as necessary playing snippets of great music to illustrate evolution of the way the instrument is used, and it great fun to try name the snippets used. But if you’re not sure the pieces are credited if you look carefully near the bottom left of the screen.

Part 1 – Guitar:

Part 2 – Drums:

Part 3 – Accordian:

Part 4 – Bass:

Part 5

SOA Pattern Books

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in Books, General, Technology

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Just as I wrap up the tech reviewing of one book, Packt invite me to start another. This time a book has the working title of SOA Patterns on the Oracle Platform (no link yet – too early). This is certainly going to be a substantial book with about 12 chapters running to about 50 pages per chapter (certainly for the first 4 chapters). Unlike a lot of the more functional Oracle books I’ve seen from Oracle this is low on graphics and screen shots and high on textual content.

So far the book has given me cause to stop and think hard about the points the author is trying to make and then demonstrate. In some respects like the definitive texts by Thomas Erl, however where Erl is solution agnostic, this book is trying to bring the patterns to life through placing them into a scenario and describing the challenges and implementation approaches in terms of the Oracle platform, particularly BPEL, Mediators, rules engines and SCA (i.e. Oracle SOA Suite).  I have laughed, as I found the book referencing back to Apache Camel.

All of this does mean that the review process is more time consuming than I had anticipated, if the review feedback is taken then I think it will have been a very worthwhile experience.  Watch this space, and I’ll blog on this one once we see the final copy, if not before.