pazikas.com

Author: PazyP

  • Anything You Want

    Summary of Anything You Want

    Derek Sivers a musician disrupts the music industry and creates CD Baby after being turned away from music distributors as “only record labels are allowed to deal with us, we don’t work directly with the artists”. Sivers creates CD Baby to sell his music. Anything You Want describes 40 lessons learned during this time.

    My Takeaways from Anything You Want

    Anything You Want is a short book meant to be read in about an hour, I really liked it, I think because it’s so short it really cuts to the chase without any of the usual bumf. I like Sivers cynicism of how he didn’t really want to have a business or expand as rapidly as he did. With the book being so short I don’t have a huge amount to say about it, being able to get through it in an hour does anything I think really matter you may as well just pick it up and see for yourself.

    Favorite Quotes

    “Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own. They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won’t make them happy. Don’t” – Derek Sivers

    “Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.” – Derek Sivers

    “In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have.” – Derek Sivers

    “If you think your life’s purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you’ll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you.” – Derek Sivers

    “any business that’s in business to sell you a cure is motivated not to focus on prevention” – Derek Sivers

    Closing Words

    A short blog post for a short book, I would recommend Anything You Want as a must-read, I really enjoyed it, I enjoyed Sivers humour and had an interest in what he had to say. Buy it, read it, if you like it great, if not you’ve only lost an hour.

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  • Atomic Habits

    Summary of Atomic Habits

    Atomic Habits by James Clear is one of those books you see recommended by everyone and after reading I can see why. I started reading the book in November last year but, most of my reading stopped in December and have only gotten around to finishing it off now. The books like its title suggest is about habits. How habits are created, how to form good habits, how to stick with new habits, how to break bad habits. It describes the process of forming or breaking habits.

    Atomic Habits describes a process of breaking habits down into tiny “atomic” increments where it takes only a short time to complete (5-10 minutes max). An example would be teaching yourself piano, rather than learn a whole song learn only a few keys, practice these keys daily until they become second nature then move on to the next keys. While slow at first eventually you will be able to play a whole song, the process of learning and practising these small increments each day compounds until it’s a habit of yours that you play the piano.

    Atomic Habits
    Atomic Habits

    My Takeaways from Atomic Habits

    I enjoyed the book although I have found the topic of habits interesting and have had previous exposure to the topic when reading about getting a better nights sleep. I hope James Clears words to stick when I am trying out something new I have a tendency to dive in headfirst, obsess over a topic then burn out, either because I am not seeing progress quick enough or I don’t have the skills required to get where I want to be.

    Adopting some of the methods described in Atomic Habits will allow me to see more projects/activities through to the end. I read the book on my kindle I would say it would be better in print form as there are a few tables within the book that I found hard to digest on my e-reader.

    Favorite Quotes from Atomic Habits

    “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” – James Clear

    “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” – James Clear

    “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement” – James Clear

    “Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.” – James Clear

    Closing Words

    Would I recommend the book? I would if you have an interest in habits and like to do many hobbies or activities but struggle to keep them up or see them through to where you wish to be.

    If you liked this article and would like to see what else I have written check them out here

  • Oracle Database with Docker

    Running an Oracle database with Docker is a fairly simple task but I thought it would be useful to document the steps required for reference as I will likely need to refer to then in the future and to help others starting out on this path on how to run Oracle Database with Docker.

    Oracle Database with Docker

    Firstly Oracle only has 12c available via Docker Hub they had some legal grievances with each other a few years ago which means Oracle no longer updates the Docker Hub images but instead stores them here on GitHub. Another note is while the information on GitHub is great you still need to download the Oracle Database install .zip files from Oracle’s website yourself further if you plan on patching the Oracle database with docker you will need to have a valid Oracle Support licence and login to MOS.

    Firstly clone the Oracle Docker images to your local machine with git

    git clone https://github.com/oracle/docker-images.git

    After you have cloned the repo you will see there is a lot more available than just Oracle Database images but for this article its all we are concerned with, move to the OracleDatabase folder, then the SingleInstance folder and finally the 19.3.0 directory.

    cd ~/docker-images/OracleDatabase/SingleInstance/19.3.0

    With your downloaded Oracle Database install .zip copy in into your current 19.3.0 directory.

    cp $HOME/Downloads/LINUX.X64_193000_db_home.zip .

    If you plan on patching this Oracle Database with Docker in the future the default scripts remove some key directories within $ORACLE_HOME to reduce image size that will cause you to run into issues when trying to patch in the future, the fix is simple by default we choose to install the “SLIM” option we just need to update the Dockerfile within the 19.3.0 directory to read false.

    ARG SLIMMING=false

    Move back to the parent directory and run buildDockerImage.sh with a -v to specify database version in this case 19.3.0 and -e to indicate we want to use enterprise edition.

    cd ~/docker-images/OracleDatabase/SingleInstance

    ./buildDockerImage.sh -v 19.3.0 -e

    Depending on the resources you have on your machine will depend on how quickly the next part goes, I would say on average it will take 20-30min so go have coffee, you should come back to a Build Complete message. We have not successfully created an Oracle database image.

    To run the image use the following;

    docker run --name "oracle19.3" -p 1521:1521 -p 5500:5500 -e ORACLE_PDB=orapdb1 -e ORACLE_PWD=topsecretpass -e ORACLE_MEM=3000 -v /opt/oracle/oradata -d oracle/database:19.3.0-ee

    Where –name is the name of the docker image, ORACLE_PDB is the PDB name, ORACLE_PWD is the database password and ORACLE_MEM is the memory allocated to the DB. This first run of the docker image will go away and create the database so expect it to take some time during its first run.

    You can use sqldeveloper to connect to your PDB or connect to sqlplus via docker by logging directly into the docker image as per below

    docker exec -it oracle19.3 /bin/bash

    ps -ef |grep pmon

    . oraenv

    sqlplus / as sysdba

    Useful Docker commands

    Stop Docker Image

    docker container stop oracle19.3

    Start docker container

    docker container start oracle19.3

    Show running Docker containers

    docker ps

    List All Docker Images

    docker images

    Delete Docker Image

    docker image rm "image_id_here"

    And that’s all there is to it, it’s not a hard process and once you have been through it once or twice it becomes second nature. I’ve found great benefit running Oracle database with Docker, previously I had multiple Virtual machines with each database version on then now I just have Oracle database docker images that I can have running and access when I need them. If you enjoyed this article about Oracle database with Docker, please read my follow up on patching oracle database docker images here.

  • The Happiness Advantage

    Summary of The Happiness Advantage

    The Happiness Advantage a book that I have seen mentioned all over the net, I decided to take the plunge and give it a listen on Audible. The author Shawn Achor preaches positive psychology and is one of TEDx most popular speakers, finding success through happiness and that happiness is a choice rather than just an emotion.

    Happiness Advantage

    The book outlines some key principles and like most self-help books then goes on to present a number of examples of how a “happiness advantage” can be practised, like where Shawn was brought into large financial institutions to speak about happiness in the midst of the 2008 financial crash and how he managed to show some stockbrokers that had just lost multiple millions that the crash wasn’t such a bad thing for them.

    The book speaks a lot about how happiness is a choice rather than just an emotion, you can choose to be happy and its completely up to you to make this choice, good things tend to come to those that are happy and has a cascading effect on you and those you interact with. The book speaks about a “fake it till you make it” approach when everything seems against you you can trick your brain into being happy and over time your mindset will change.

    My Takeaways from The Happiness Advantage

    I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but I largely already practice much that was mentioned, I am generally a pretty happy guy, I am pretty blessed in life to never to have had to face any adversity, with any I have experienced I’ve overcome without true difficulty or hardship and have climbed my respective career ladder quickly and with relative ease.

    Perhaps that means the words that Shawn Achor the author writes about ring true. I am always smiling and can always find the positives in even the biggest negatives where I could be considered an eternal optimist finding the good side in everything where others only see bad or negatives. Sometimes I feel like self-help books like The Happiness Advantage can deliver a point or advice in less than 100 pages then use another 200 filling out the pages to make a book.

    Favourite Quotes from The Happiness Advantage

    “Each one of us is like that butterfly the Butterfly Effect. And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations our families and our communities.” – Shawn Achor

    “..the more you believe in your own ability to success the more likely it is that you will.” – Shawn Achor

    “Constantly scanning the world for the negative comes with a great cost. It undercuts our creativity, raises our stress levels, and lowers our motivation and ability to accomplish goals.” – Shawn Achor

    “Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it is the realization that we can.” – Shawn Achor

    “I started to realize just how much our interpretation of reality changes our experience of that reality.” ― Shawn Achor

    Closing Words

    I liked The Happiness Advantage, I think I will buy a paper copy for the bookcase for future reference and would definitely recommend giving it a read, it’s not a long book at 256 pages.

    The “fake it till you make it” approach to happiness certainly opened my eyes, as well as the smiling for even 15min, will make you feel happier I practised this during my daily dog walks, where I would walk around this streets or in the park grinning with a big smile that went ear to ear and I will admit it felt great.

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  • How to Win Friends and Influence People

    How to Win Friends and Influence People my second review comes a decision to format each book review article in the same way. This should provide commonality across them as they grow in number and provide me with a clear format on what I should be including a set amount of information. So each review from now on will begin with a summary, my takeaways then finally some of my favourite quotes. So lets yet into it 🙂

    Summary of How to Win Friends and Influence People

    How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a pretty old book, first published in 1937 its sold over 30 million copies and is listed as one of the best selling and most influential books of all time. The version I have recently finished is an updated version that reframes Carnegie’s original topics and frames them around using social media and the Internet, things that were pure imagination back in the 30’s.

    The book goes through a number of key principles of communication, self-expression, leadership and how your or business actions in certain situations can go different ways depending on how you take them and react either in good or bad ways. It poses a number of scenarios in story format of ways in which businesses or people have addresses situations and the consequences of such actions advising you as the reader on the good and bad things so should you find yourself in a similar situation you are better equipped through your learnings of the book.

    My Takeaways from How to Win Friends and Influence People

    I have heard about How to Win Friends and Influence People a bunch of times over the years, it’s much shorter than I thought it would be. It’s more of guidelines on how to be a nice person more than anything else and how just being a good person generally leads to great things somewhere or another. After reading it, what is hyped as one of the must-reads of one’s lifetime I didn’t really think it was that great, maybe this was the first book back in the 30’s to say these mantras to live by, but I feel like I’ve read them all a dozen times now over the years in other self-help/growth books and blogs.

    The version I read was published in 2011, adding the digital age to the title kind of means it gets outdated fast, with tech and the technology industry moving at a blistering pace it speaks about Facebook back then not the raging behemoth it is now and doesn’t even mention Instagram, I guess that this update needs updating again.

    Favourite Quotes

    “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” – Dale Carnegie

    “Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.” – Dale Carnegie

    “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.” – Dale Carnegie

    “You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.” – Dale Carnegie

    “By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.” – Dale Carnegie

    Closing Words

    Would I recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People, probably I would ask a question on how many self-help books the reader has already read if only a couple, crack on but if you have read a fair number you have likely already heard most of the teachings but its short enough to blast through in a week or so?

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  • McPlant: Should we endorse it?

    Admission: I am not a vegan. I try to have a balanced diet of both meat and plant-based meals, but I have no desire to cut animal products from my diet completely.

    So should we endorse the McPlant?

    The rise in popularity of plant-based products has seen consumer consumption in the market rise at an unprecedented rate, looking at the Google search statistics searching for ‘veganism’ has increased a massive 590% in the last 5 years. And the Fast food chains have started to cotton on to this growing trend.

    Should we endorse the McPlant?

    We’ve had Greggs here in the UK launch with much success the vegan sausage roll and steak bake with further additions rumoured to be on the way. KFC released the vegan burger providing their iconic original flavour recipe on a meat-free alternative and now its time for the king of the fast-food industry McDonald’s to throw its stake into the game with the impending launch of the community dubbed McPlant.

    But aren’t these copy-cat, meat emulators creating a new problem?

    My issue with plant-based proteins is that imitate meat counterparts is that they are not really any more sustainable than the meat itself and I can only assume that this will make up the buld of the McPlant. If a time comes when the world has dramatically reduced its consumption of meat in favour of plant-based alternatives, large swathes of fertile land (possibly that which is currently used for cattle) would be required to grow the quantities needed to meet current consumption habits.

    Since the plant-based proteins are then refined to become something akin to meat, there is still that intensive process to create the plant-based substitute. I can’t see why we wouldn’t have all of the existing problems that a capitalist society breed, such as deforestation to make more cattle farming space. The problem would surely only evolve to become deforestation to make space for more crop growing farmland!

    Many of the arguments against the consumption of meat link back to animal cruelty and the practice of animals being bred and raised purely for slaughter. A shift to a plant-based alternative would help to address this of course, but bringing this article back to McDonald’s recent announcement of the McPlant, one has to ask how anyone who has chosen to ditch meat for animal cruelty reasons could then endorse a company like McDonald’s and any vegan product it aims to release such as the McPlant?

    McPlant: Should we endorse it?
    McPlant?

    The fast-food chain happens to be one of the largest producers of meat in the world, with many of their farms having featured in documentaries and news reports exposing the appalling, squalid conditions that animals are forced to live in. The same animals that go on to become our McNuggets or Big Macs. Surely any vegan cannot in good conscience endorse a vegan plant-based range of products such as the McPlant developed by one of the worlds biggest animal killers and can see the McPlant range for what it is – a marketing ploy and to tap into a new-ish emerging market.

    I have no issue with anyone who chooses to follow a plant-based diet. I think we should all take steps to reduce our meat intake. However, I also think that there must be a better solution to climate change than replacing animal meat with a plant-based substitute. As the supposedly superior race, it is arguably within our capabilities to find a truly sustainable solution.

    I believe the first step towards sustainable tranquillity would be for human beings to adopt a ‘grow what you need’ idealism. This could be as simple as utilizing back gardens, green spaces and/or allotments to grow our own produce to support what we and our immediate family required. Admittedly to reach this equilibrium would require a dramatic shift in current consumerism habits and a reduction in our want for things to be available to us instantly.

    But to eradicate our appetite for instant gratification, you need to break down capitalism.

    And therein lies the real problem, it’s much bigger than any McPlant burger wolfed down in 10 minutes …

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  • Ad-Blocking – Blocking Social Popups

    Ad-Blocking is good. Ads are annoying, they are generally all in your face. If you haven’t got an ad blocker running on your browser now is the time to correct that!

    Ad-Blocking setup

    Go download uBlock Origin for your browser of choice be it Chrome, Firefox or Safari, it’s one of the best on the market and it’s lightweight enough for you not to notice any difference in page load times, you might actually notice an improvement in load times as a bunch of the usual trash that was being loaded is now being blocked.

    Once you have an Ad-Blocking setup you soon discover that the net is quite a nice thing to look at. You can easily digest articles or sites that take your fancy without sensory overload when you’re not seeing the latest nonsense being punted by Wish or your favourite sites call to action for this week’s social injustice.

    One of the most annoying pop-ups for me that used to slip through my filters was bloggers or influencer pop-ups asking you to subscribe to their mailing list or other social media but alas, there is actually an option within uBlock Origin to block these. It’s not enabled by default and hidden away under the Annoyances section if uBlock, flipping it on gets me one step closer to an annoyance, distraction-free Internet with Ad-Blocking.

    To turn this setting on head into uBlock Origin’s settings and you will find a bunch of additional blocks that you can enable that are off by default, such as filter lists to block everything from Facebook but more specifically to turn off Social Media subscription messages or call to action pop-ups make sure you check to block Fanboy’s Annoyance and Fanboy’s Social.

    Ad-Blocking
    Ad-Blocking

    Give it a go, you might be surprised how clean the web actual looks without all the advertisements and calls to action.

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  • Korn Shell Operators

    I write $SHELL scripts most days mostly Korn Shell, I am always looking these two tables up on other sites for the Korn shell rather than commit them to memory, so why not just post it here so I know where to find it forevermore. We mostly use ksh over bash as Korn shell is on every system regardless of the age of that host.

    Korn Shell Operators

    ItemDescription
    -a FileTrue, if the specified file is a symbolic link that points to another file that does exist.
    -b FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is a block special file.
    -c FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is a character special file.
    -d FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is a directory.
    -e FileTrue, if the specified file exists.
    -f FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is an ordinary file.
    -g FileTrue, if the specified file exists and its setgid bit is set.
    -h FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is a symbolic link.
    -k FileTrue, if the specified file exists and its sticky bit is set.
    -n StringTrue, if the length of the specified string is nonzero.
    -o OptionTrue, if the specified option is on.
    -p FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is a FIFO special file or a pipe.
    -r FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is readable by the current process.
    -s FileTrue, if the specified file exists and has a size greater than 0.
    -t FileDescriptorTrue, if specified file descriptor number is open and associated with a terminal device.
    -u FileTrue, if the specified file exists and its setuid bit is set.
    -w FileTrue, if the specified file exists and the write bit is on. However, the file will not be writable on a read-only file system even if this test indicates true.
    -x FileTrue, if the specified file exists and the execute flag is on. If the specified file exists and is a directory, then the current process has permission to search in the directory.
    -z StringTrue, if length of the specified string is 0.
    -L FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is a symbolic link.
    -O FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is owned by the effective user ID of this process.
    -G FileTrue, if the specified file exists and its group matches the effective group ID of this process.
    -S FileTrue, if the specified file exists and is a socket.
    File1 -nt File2True, if File1 exists and is newer than File2.
    File1 -ot File2True, if File1 exists and is older than File2.
    File1 -ef File2True, if File1 and File2 exist and refer to the same file.
    String1 = String2True, if String1 is equal to String2.
    String1 != String2True, if String1 is not equal to String2.
    String = PatternTrue, if the specified string matches the specified pattern.
    String != PatternTrue, if the specified string does not match the specified pattern.
    String1 < String2True, if String1 comes before String2 based on the ASCII value of their characters.
    String1 > String2True, if String1 comes after String2 based on the ASCII value of their characters.
    Expression1 -eq Expression2True, if Expression1 is equal to Expression2.
    Expression1 -ne Expression2True, if Expression1 is not equal to Expression2.
    Expression1 -lt Expression2True, if Expression1 is less than Expression2.
    Expression1 -gt Expression2True, if Expression1 is greater than Expression2.
    Expression1 -le Expression2
    True, if Expression1 is less than or equal to Expression2.
    Expression1 -ge Expression2True, if Expression1 is greater than or equal to Expression2.
    Korn Shell

    You can combine expressions together like below;

    ItemDescription
    (Expression)
    True, if the specified expression is true. Used to group expressions.
    ! ExpressionTrue, if the specified expression is false.
    Expression1 && Expression2True, if Expression1 and Expression2 are both true.
    Expression1 || Expression2True, if either Expression1 or Expression2 is true.
    Korn Shell

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  • 5 am Club

    5 am Club a book by Robin S. Sharma speaks about the benefits of waking up at 5 am every day before the rest of the world rises. The self-help book takes the form of a story where 2 people meet a homeless man at a conference in New York, the homeless man turns out to be a world eccentric business mogul and billionaire Stone Riley. Stone takes it upon himself to teach his new found friends the ways for the 5 am club as they travel the globe on his private jets learning they ways to bulletproof your life and achieve greatness through rising at 5 am.

    5 am club
    5 am Club

    The 5 am club speaks of the 20/20/20 concept where you wake at 5 am, perform 20 minutes of intense exercise, 20 minutes of self-reflection such as meditation or journaling and 20 minutes of growth through reading and learning, the idea of doing this at 5 am gives you 1hr of pure self-care without distraction before everyone else starts to begin their days. It also touches on subjects that we as humans are meant to rise with the sun like our ancestors of old and that the human mind and body is at the most productive at first light rather than burning the midnight oil before going to sleep.

    The 5 am club doesn’t shy away from delivering hard truths, it bluntly states that most people lack the ability to rise at 5 am that the temptation is just too much to fall back onto the pillow and go back to sleep and that waking at 5 am is a true mind over matter battle that only the most dedicated can achieve. The books discuss issues on social media and our inability to escape news and current affairs keeping us in an endless trap glued to our smartphones scrolling through social media for a quick happiness fix when all it really does it leave us hungering for more.

    The story of The 5 am Club itself following the three protagonists around is somewhat shallow, you can predict what going to happen next quite easily, although I do understand the story is only present to provide a framework for delivering a larger methodology I felt it quite corny at times.

    Ironically my major takeaway from the book is not that waking at 5am will solve all of your problems but the fact that implementing small but good habits and sticking to them overtime can result in a great amount of self improvement and a level of increased happiness.

    Favorite Quotes from The 5 am Club

    “Limitation is nothing more than a mentality that too many good people practice daily until they believe it’s reality.” – Robin S. Sharma

    “All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.” – Robin S. Sharma

    “Limitation is nothing more than a mentality that too many good people practise daily until they believe it’s reality. It breaks my heart to see so many potentially powerful human beings stuck in a story about why they can’t be extraordinary, professionally and personally. You need to remember that your excuses are seducers, your fears are liars and your doubts are thieves.” ― Robin Sharma

    Conclusions

    I enjoyed the book, I might read another of the author’s publications in good time, but I won’t be rushing out to the pick it up straight away. If you have any interest in picking the book up yourself I would appreciate if you used my link here to give me a tiny kickback from Amazon.

    I have a bunch of book reviews and plan to keep adding to these over time I would appreciate it if you would check out all of the stuff I have written here.