Monthly Archives: June 2015

Kscope15, a celebration of tech…


Kscope15 promised to be a brand new experience in more than one way.

Kscope15LogoAs I start to write this report, I am flying from Düsseldorf airport to Atlanta. It will be the first time flying to the United States with a stopover, and because of Erik van Roon, I came prepared. With just carry-on luggage, I should end up at my final destination, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, together with my ‘stuff’. I am flying Delta Airlines this time, and for an airline that promises just a ‘lunch’ during the 9 hours flight, they do come up with a lot of food…

My colleagues of FOEX have already arrived at the event-venue and are setting up our booth.

On arrival at Fort Lauderdale airport, I am scheduled to meet-up with distinguished product manager for PL/SQL and EBR, Bryn Llewellyn. From there, we would travel to Hallandale Beach to check into our hotels. This plan was only hindered by sheer force of wind shear at Atlanta International, which delayed my flight.

The first day, the Sunday, started off with a boiling walk to the Diplomat hotel. Upon registration I was pleasantly surprised that FOEX had graciously upgraded my conference pass to a full pass, which is cool as I get to attend sessions! And the kind ladies of ODTUG had even attached an ACE Associate ribbon to my name-tag, of which I am kind of proud.

I had so many cool meet-ups and run-ins at Kscope. Just to name a few new friends in no particular order:

Of course I spent most of my time in the APEX and database development tracks. If you look at the momentum that APEX is generating, I think we can safely say that we are making a difference… We can say with confidence: #LetsWreckThisTogether!

The “together” bit was beautifully expressed by Joel Kallman as you could hear a pin drop when Carl Backstrom and Scott Spadafore of the APEX team were remembered…

But still there is a lot of work that has to be done to further spread the word on APEX. I guess I have had at least 4 conversations where I had the opportunity to talk about and explain APEX to people who were still oblivious. That is one of the most rewarding this to do.

Nikki beachThe week passed so quickly and most experiences are becoming great memories very quickly now. The countless meet ups with friend and heroes from the Oracle world, the white party at Nikki Beach and the after party at The Mansion and of course the Oracle content which was dished out with great quality.

Just on more thing… Travelling Über is the best! I have been doing this in San Francisco and used the service here to get back to the airport. Why would you take a taxi with this service around? Because of the way it works, the drivers I have met, have been much more friendly than regular ‘cabbies’. I would recommend this any day.

So, now I am heading home, hanging in the sky somewhere between Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta. Thinking back on Roel’s blog post on his first Kscope… will this have changed my life? Quite possibly, but on the other hand things could not get much more crazy than they have been over the last 6 to 12 months!!

If you are looking to read up on the business side of things, please check out the FOEX blog!

Please also don’t forget to check out the #Kscope15 hash tag on Twitter and remember, when you are at an Oracle conference, also use the #orclconf as additional hash tag. This will help to make it even easier to follow your favorite tech-community on-line!


Using a terminal emulator on Mac

Dumb title for a blog post? No, not really I guess…

ZOC Terminal emulatorI have been using a terminal emulator, basically ever since I got away from the VT100 terminal:

  • ICE.TCP Pro
  • KEAVT
  • Reflection ‘X’

And a few other obscure applications that I cannot even recall anymore.
Currently, and over the last 6 to 8 years, I have been using ZOC.

The background of this story is: In the beginning these were the first DOS PC’s and later some Windows based machines that needed to interface with (in my case) VAX VMS, and later with the other UNIXes.

But why use a terminal emulator on MAC, for crying out loud? I hear you think… OS X is a Unix, so it should be all native, right?
Wrong! Well, kind of…

There are so many small (and bigger) differences when using various systems that it pays off to have a program that allows you to tune into these differences. Nothing more annoying than a backspace key that does not work or key-combinations that act different than you would expect.
This is even more true when you work with a mix of different operating systems, Solaris, HP UX, Oracle Linux, perhaps even some IBM OS’s.
And for when you would like to have further tune-ability of you toolkit, ranging from colors, to sizes, from fonts to layout.  Frivolities? Perhaps, but if you spent a lot of your time everyday in such a  tool, it does make a difference.

Printer terminal, also a terminal emulatorMore importantly are configurable logging, for documentation and troubleshooting. You can regard this as the modern variation to the old school print terminal (who can remember those?)
Configuring transfer types, modem and commutation settings and keeping these organized. As well as password storage and administrative support.

Well, basically, this is why I use a terminal emulator on my MAC!
And I think I found a valid tool in ZOC, by Markus Schmidt. Please check it out ZOC

Well, I hope you get to enjoy your terminal work as much as I do!