How To Add A Feed to your Blogger Blog

It's official, news aggregaters are great. They're a one stop place where you can check on a host of websites that are of interest to you, and quickly see updates that have been added.
Thus saving lots of time you can utilise by drinking cups of tea and randomly surfing other sites that aren't on your interest radar.

Later versions of browsers like IE and Firefox allow you to subscribe to a sites feeds from the browser itself and again get your info served up on a plate, with a couple of waffer thin mints on the side.

As such if you've got a blog yourself, then it's not a bad idea to give your readership (both of them) the opportunity to subscribe to your site by adding a link. The following simple bite sized instructions tell you how you can do this from blogger using Feedburner.
Go to your blog and copy its URL to the clipboard (Control+C is always a good bet for this).

1. Go to the Feedburner website at http://www.feedburner.com
   
2. In the shaded box under the imaginative heading "Start FeedBurning Now" paste your URL.
3. Click the Next>> button.
4. On the identify feed source page displayed select one of the sources displayed. As an RSS fan, I'm going with the RSS one for this example. For those of you who don't know their RSS from their elbow, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. No really, it does. You can also repeat the process for Atom later if you want.
5. Click Next>> again.
6. After tinkering with your feed description and address, or not if life's too short, do one of two things. Either, create an account by filling in a username, password and e-mail address; or login using an existing Feedburner account if you've already got one. If you've already got one you probably don't need to be reading these instructions, but hey.
7. Click Activate Feed>>
8. Click Skip directly to feed management. You can always refine your feed options later.
   
9. Click on the Publicize tab
10. Under Make it Easy to Subscribe click on the friendly graphic link (below the bullet point Chickletize your website).
11. Choose a feed icon (I always prefer the wee one)
12. Scroll to the bottom of the page
13. Under Use as a widget in select Blogger from the drop down list.
14. Press Go!
15. You are now directed to the Add Page Element page of your blog. If you have multiple blogs, select the one you are burning a feed for.
16. Press the Add Widget button.
17. Position your subscripew now widget where you want it, and press Save.

Congratulations, you've now got a feed on your blog. Have a cup of tea to celebrate.

Spooling Your Output

When writing SQL scripts in a production environment it's always a good idea to spool the fruits of your labor to a log file when it is run. It also gives you the opportunity to wear your "I Told You So" teeshirt when someone denies you've run something.

Selecting the database name from sys.v_$database also gives you the warm feeling that you've run your deletion script in a development environment and not accidentally against production when you review your log file. Alternatively it could give you a more localised warm feeling down your trouser leg if you find out it's the other way round !

The set pagesize 0 command formats your SQL output better so you get one continuous page rather than giving you reams of headers.

The set timing on statement gives you timings for the SQL being run. This gives future runners of the script an idea of how long the SQL takes, which can bu useful, especially when running it in production.

whenever SQLERROR exit failure;

spool "/filename"

set echo on;
set feedback on;
set verify on;
set pagesize 0;
set termout on;
set timing on;

select name from sys.v_$database;

/************************/
/* Insert your SQL here */
/************************/

spool off;

Set Current Schema

I always forget the syntax for setting the current schema in Oracle. Then again that's why the great Flying Spaghetti Monster created blogs.

alter session set current_schema = sysadm