one.less.travelled

I have just three words to describe the experience: Counter-intuitive, Convoluted and ATROCIOUS.

Yes. Atrocious.

Getting a working Peoplesoft setup using the OVM templates is about as easy as pulling teeth. After having installed the OVM, the OVM-MANAGER, Converting the template zips to an accessible format, Importing the templates, Creating Virtual Machines, Starting Virtual Machines, Going through the initial config, and NOT GETTING A WORKING SETUP, I have decided to finally give up on this being in any way "a sane approach" to getting a demo environment going quickly.

It took me a good week of farting around with Virtual Box (what I installed OVM on top off), OVM, OVM Manager and I'm still no further off than if I had just downloaded the edelivery zip files myself.

I don't know what exactly Oracle is trying to accomplish here by making things so ridiculously difficult by forcing prospective customers to use OVM... I think as far as pushing "Oracle VM" as a "virtualization solution" is concerned the writing is on the wall. Oracle better recognize that VMWare won that race long time ago. Please stop struggling with it, it will be easier for all of us ;)

I have now decided to just do a full install of 8.52 , something which I should have done to begin with. However, I was seduced by the thought of (1) not having to install 40 GB of install media, and (2) being able to get a running PSOFT environment once I got past the OVM Server/Manager installation part. Suffice it to say that OVM Server & Manager part is the easy piece...

So the plan now is to download UGGH!!! the 8.52 media kit, and just do a straight VBox->OEL5 install for the WEB/APP/DB tiers. I might even try running all tiers on one OEL virtualbox instance and use an XP or Win7 Guest as the "developer Workstation"

This is something that Oracle can very easily do since they now own VirtualBox however they choose to make things needlessly over-complicated and end up making the end product pretty much useless for 99% of their customer base.

My suggestions to Oracle:

1. Supply VmWare images or templates.
2. Supply VirtualBox importable templates.
3. PLEASE. PLEASE. KILL Oracle VM. It is done like dinner. VMWare won that war, the sooner you recognize, the better off we'll all be in the long run.

kthxbye! :)

I have been working on getting the kinks out of an Oracle VM Template Demo install for HCM9.1, and to say the least, it has not been easy. I'd say it looks good on paper. You think you'll just head on over to the edelivery site, download the templates and off you go, but you'd be gravely mistaken.

The OVM templates are about as difficult to get going from a logistical perspective as is a new install. Maybe I say this because I'm used to direct installs, but I found that if you don't have dedicated hardware to run the OVM Server and Manager combo, you're in for a bit of a rig-a-ma-roll!! Especially if you're going to use VirtualBox or VMWare to "fake" the metal for OVM Server/Manager machines.

At present I'm looking into converting the OVM images (essentially xen images) into Oracle Virtual Box images, because for a really simple throwaway install, it is quite quick to get going with Virtualbox.

I think it's about time Oracle started supplying VirtualBox images for Peoplesoft instead of making people jump through hoops to do a vanilla throwaway install.

I'll be documenting the steps I had to take to convert the images, and the pitfalls of installing OVM Server on a VirtualBox substrate, because believe me, it is nothing short of pulling teeth to get this setup going if you don't have physicall servers to work with.

Yes. As computers become commodity items and cellphones carry more computing power than was used by NASA to send humans to the moon, the real revolution is happening in the physical computing space.

This "smart" wine rack by "ThingM" is so awesome, and a herald of things to come! We are leaving the boring computing phase and entering the "Technology as Magic" phase.

This is where the value will be added. In terms of design and creativity and usability. Usability to real humans, with no time for futzing with debug flags or registry entries.

Hopefully the interface simplification ushered in by the Physical Computing revolution will inform computer interface design and take us out of the dark ages of "click this, go to that tab, look in the right corner, put 0xFSD226, click Apply, Clik OK, clikc YES to the stupid dialog..." etc.

And now, I present to you, the coolest thing I have yet seen on the physical computing scene ... ahem...

So I finally received my parts from SeeedStudio .... that took a while, one reason was that I ordered on the 29th of December and they were closed till the 4th and then the package sat at HongKong Post for 7 frikking days! In any case, it left on the 11th and I got the lil box O goodies on the 15th, just in time for the weekend! woo hoo!

Here is a picture of the stuff. I got a half dozen shift registers, a couple Maxim Led drivers, a bunch of led matrix (red only) and some bar graph 10 segment LED's ... the idea floating around in my head is to somehow create a Server monitoring display dashboard thingy which will use blinky lights to warn of impending danger (or disk space outage or cpu overload etc... but we'll see).

And here is Le Stash!



First order of business, of course, was to assemble and solder the "Danger Shield" by Zak "Hoeken" Smith (of the CupCake/MakerBot and Sanguino fame).

Headers go on first.



Some time passes as we inhale the solder and flux fumes... the makeshift "fume extractor" fan distributes the fumes evenly throughout the enclosed workspace ... we marvel at the quality of our first time solder joints ...



... and eh VOILA!!!



I did try to download the "firmwares" (as Z.Hoken calls the sketches on his page) from the sourceforge repository, but I found that they don't work with Arduino-0017 and give weird errors.

Finally, I found, through my friend Google, link to a discussion which mentions the fix (or hack... or ugly kludge or whatever) which is to put the magical incantation of #include "WProgram.h" at the top of your _init.h file.

I put this in the beginning of my sketch (not the _init.h file, but before the include that .. ahem, includes the _init.h file.

In any case, the problem has existed since arduino-0012 ... but seems to have been on the back burner ... whatever.

UPDATE: The "knock sensor" doesn't really work ... I think it is brokeded! :-<

Another wonderful concept using Arduino. This one uses a steel ball as the interface and a regular laser mouse as the pickup device, that info goes into an arduino which encodes it through a digital potentiometer and sends it on to a controller.

Reference: arduino.cc , kellbot.com, nycresistor.com

Okay, so this is the kind of stuff I want to do with my recently acquired arduino kit!



I think instead of using the knocks, a grid of magnetic sensors would be much more appropriate. What you do is carry a small magnet around on your keychain (if you don't already) and wave it at the door in a given pattern right,down,left,right and the door magically opens

Now that could take care of giving temporary access to premises to whomever you wish.