Christmas is nearly here!

2006 has been a great year! Fraser was born on 2nd September weighing 7lbs 12oz. He is coming along very well, beginning to hold his head up, smiling and even laughing too. Big brother Laurie is very proud. He enjoys his nursery and amuses his parents with outlandish stories and songs much of the time. Claire will return to work for her firm part-time again soon and is enjoying the arrangement of working from home, but keeping her finger on the pulse of the law very much. Don continues to travel around with Oracle; a recent trip to Dubai during the dark UK winter days was very welcome. There is a gathering of the Clan this Christmas as Don's sister Christine (+ family) and brother Gordon (+ fiancee) are coming to the UK for Christmas. We are looking forward to being together. The breweries have been forewarned! 2007 will bring some more travel for the family as Gordon is getting married in Fiji! We are already planning the travel arrangements and logistics. With 2 young sons, the long flight to Sydney will be interesting, to say the least. Don, as best man, will have to start giving some thought to his speech too! We wish you all a very happy Christmas and all the very best for 2007. Slainte!

Look who can hold his head up!

Parakey

The guy who co-invented the Firefox web browser, Blake Ross, is about to unveil a radical new way of managing all your content, wherever it might reside. The project is called Parakey. Essentially, it will overlay your existing OS and allow you to manage your photos, files, web pages by creating a kind of local server on your machine. You can then decide whom you want to give access by allocating different keys for friends, family, public access etc. You can sign up to get information on the project at www.parakey.com and read about it in this article on IEEE Spectrum.

Ma wee cuz...

Och, ma wee cuz Linz is travelling in big, bonnie Ozland. Goggy helped her on her way. Check out her progress here: http://linzcurrie.blogspot.com/
Bless!

It's all about Fusion.....

Fusion Middleware, Fusion Applications, Fusion Architecture....Oracle's watchword is Fusion, an instantiation of the architectural style called SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). SOA is a fundamental change in approach for software vendors, software services organisations and customers alike. It goes right to the core of the ways in which organisations operate and is heavily influenced by issues such as governance and compliance. Cynics would write it off as just another fad, but all indications, including prognostications from industry analysts suggest that it's here to stay; indeed it looks like having as lasting an impact as the relational data model rather than more transitory shifts such as distributed object oriented computing.
www.oracle.com/soa

Steve and Dawn's Wedding

We had a great weekend at Steve and Dawn's wedding in Loughborough. The groom was dashing, the bride beautiful and blushing, the location was stunning. Claire and I brought details of all the local hospitals with us, just in case the imminent arrival arrived a bit early!!

Book cover

This is the image that will be on the book cover. Comments?