Basmati Bingo!

Many things in life aren't guaranteed and water damaged Apple products are no exception.

This is very unfortunate as not only are they incredibly expensive to replace, but it's also ridiculously easy to find yourself in the regrettable situation of having a soggy iSomething to fix.

Once such situation arose on Sunday when I was trying to save some time and (to cut a long story short) my iPhone ended up down the loo. It could have been worse however, the loo was mid-flush at the time (after a #1) so I was able (and willing) to "dive in" after it. If it wasn't for my Ninja like reactions I'm sure I'd be $250 worse off, but I was able to save it....or so I thought.

After picking it out of the bowl and giving it some vigorous towelling down (and treatment with the hair dryer) it was all over the place. The speakers wouldn't work, I couldn't make a call, it wouldn't play music, the navigation was slow and messy. In short I thought I'd buggered it up and was going to have to admit, in the middle of the Apple Store, that I'd flushed my phone down the bog and needed a new one.

However, there was one option remaining - the rice.

It turns out that uncooked rice is very good at absorbing moisture. So, I turned my phone off and left it in a bag of uncooked Basmati rice for about 16 hours. The morning after I gingerly switched my phone on and lo and behold, it was back to normal again!

So, we can take two very valuable life lessons from this experience;

1. Don't try and Facebook while having a piss
2. Rice is amazing

How to start Oracle on AIX...

....after shutting it down with the Enterprise Manager console and crapping yourself as you can't get it back up!

Yes, this happened to me earlier today so I thought I'd share how to start Oracle back up on AIX. It's not quite as simple as on Windows (i.e. by starting the service) but it's not too painful.

First of all, you need a sysdba user and password...which you probably have if you've shut it down via the EM console.

Next you need to run the following command...

$ sqplus /nolog
SQL> CONNECT SYS/sys_password as SYSDBA
SQL> STARTUP

...and with a bit of luck you should be in business!

Welcome one, welcome all!

Welcome to 'Bictser's Blog'; your one stop shop for all things everything!


I figure the world is lacking some thoughtful insight into the world of Bicster (aka Chris Beech) and what finer forum than the blogosphere?


You can expect some random rants, some techincal hints, some useful insights, some opinion but mostly complete randomness.


So, fasten your seatbelts and ensure your seat back and folding trays are in their fully upright position...this could be a bumpy ride!