So, Farewell Then Dizwell
Posted by David Aldridge on 2006-12-27
I’m sorry to hear that Howard Rogers has decided to shut down his Dizwell Informatics website, citing the workload of managing it and the number of people raising issues with articles when they plainly were not following the directions. Personally I used nearly all of Howard’s install articles and found every one of them to be of the highest quality. They saved me a lot of time and trouble over the past year or so.
I’m just guessing, but I expect that starting a new job and the need to move back into the Big City doesn’t help with the workload either, and I can certainly sympathise with that — I have a backlog of six or seven technical articles floating around in draft form at the moment but with an impending move, search for “new opportunities”, and three kids to find schools and daycares for I haven’t much hope of getting to grips with them at the moment.
Anyhoo, I hope that Howard will continue to make a public contribution through other sites, and maybe consider sending those handy articles on to a new online home.
Andy C said
That’s a real shame. I couldn’t work out from his final post whether Howard really meant the complete site in its entirety or just the forums. I was rather hoping he would preserve his blog with his opinionated and forthright articles.
David Aldridge said
I’m pretty sure that he meant the whole site … for posterity, here is Howard’s last posting:
“Actually, on further reflection, I’ve decided Plan C is much the better bet: ditch the whole site and have done with it.
I shall be removing the DNS delegation immediately, so most of you won’t be reading this anyway.
I’m bored with having to manage the site. I’m fed up with people who can’t read and follow simple instructions. I’m tired beyond belief with posts that start “I’m following your article” when the poster clearly isn’t.
To those that have enjoyed the site, I thank you. Otherwise, over and out.“
CarlosAL said
The boy seems to be lost without a trace!
As one of the regulars, I’m very sorry for this sudden goodbye (whitout a real goodbye).
So good luck to him.
Cheers.
Carlos.
Sad Day in Oracleville « Mike R’s Blog said
[...] Dizwell gone?! Just saw David Aldridge’s post about Howard Rogers shutting down his Dizwell site. A real shame to lose the abundance of valuable information Howard made readily available to the Oracle community. I will truly miss his site. [...]
Mark Rittman said
Yes, it is a shame indeed. I can certainly sympathise – running a site like his is often a thankless task, and many’s the time I’ve felt like chucking it all in as well. It’s a shame the articles aren’t preserved in an archive though – the google cache will work for a while, but of course it’d have to be Howard that hosted any archived copies though.
A real shame, I’ll miss Howard, his insights and wit, and of course the excellent articles. A real loss.
Mark
Mark Rittman said
- I would add, I’d drop him a line but of course, if he’s deleted the DNS entries, no doubt the emails would bounce as well.
Marco Gralike said
I will dearly miss him; great full for all those great articles though. As said by Mark, a real shame.
Kevinclosson said
It was a good site.
Noons said
A pity, indeed.
Howard should make those articles available somewhere willing to host them, though. It’s too bad if all that knowledge base is lost.
Andy C said
Oh I am sure a spammer has replicated the site somewhere and claimed it all as his own work.
Wolfgang Breitling said
I’ll miss him too though I have used his site far too little/infrequent. I am so glad I recently downloaded all his instructions on how to create a single machine RAC using VMware.
Peter K said
Yep, the Dizwell site will be greatly missed and of course HJR too although I’m sure that he will be around here and there. I saw his last posting on Oranews but tried going over to the site but was too late as he had already pulled the plug.
Here’s hoping that there will be a resurrection sometime in the near future as Howard gets settled to his new routine.
herodt said
Cheers Howard, it was a great site and you will be missed.
bert said
This is a real shame. As an Oracle newbie, I’ve found Howard’s site to be invaluable. I hope he’s ok.
Freek said
You are kidding, right!?
Last thing I read was that he was planning to move the site to a new host and that it would be unavailable for a couple of days.
When I tried later I only could see the placeholder page, so I thought that something had gone wrong with the move…
I really liked reading his blog and he had some very interesting articles on his site (the one about registering an oracle db in an windows active directory to name just one).
It would be indeed very pitty if such a user base would be lost. It was one of those few sites of which you new the author actually had tested what he/she wrote.
Paul Moore said
This is very sad news. I kept hoping that the last message was a joke, or ironic.
I have used, and benefited from, many of Howard’s articles. I have also enjoyed his blog immensely. And probably like many others, I haven’t publicly thanked him for all his work.
So in the hope that Howard reads this, I’ll say it here. Thanks, Howard – your work was appreciated, and I will certainly miss reading your thoughts. Like many, I’d like to see the articles retained somewhere, but ultimately that’s a selfish wish, as it’s for my own benefit. So I’ll respect whatever Howard prefers to do, and I wish him well.
Paul.
Freek said
There seems to be some changes on the http://www.dizwell.com site!
The site is not (yet?) up, but the placeholder is gone and some files have been uploaded …
Freek said
Yes!
Dizwell is back!
gazzag said
He’s keen on his dramatic exits though, isn’t he?
Dan Morgan said
I am sorry to see Dizwell’s departure. It was an invaluable resource.
If anyone has Howard’s contact info … I would be happy to host and maintain his contents on the Puget Sound Oracle User Group’s web server.
open letter to Howard Rogers » Andy C said
[...] Mind you, never say never. [...]
Anonymous said
It was really a great site. Wasnt there a knowledgebase tar on his website that was availble for local install?
open letter to Howard Rogers - Blog in isolation said
[...] OraNA and hence will not contaminate or interrupt the stream of consciousness.Mind you, never say never.AndyRelated postsreaders of Oracle blog aggregators unite (and take over)attention all Oracle [...]
open letter to Howard Rogers - My Habari Sandpit said
[...] HowardWhen Tim Hall ‘tagged’ me, my initial, instinctive gut reaction was: God- what an infantile, puerile idea. There’s no way I am going to participate in that ‘meme’. The concept wasn’t new to me as I’d already seen Scoble and those Web 2.0 PR types participate in similar mindless activities which I just chose to ignore.However, my reasons for objecting were slightly different from yours. Normally, I despise being told what to so and what to blog about. Similarly, whenever my various employers announced a ‘Dress down Friday’ which was gleefully received by my colleagues, I would purposefully don a suit and tie. After all, a uniform on a Friday is still a uniform.Secondly, the very thought of having to identify eight further victims to be tagged also filled me with dread. Not because I worried about OraNA being swamped with an exponential explosion and prolonged burst of non-technical content but, because, I feared the unlucky recipients may possibly share my feelings.Of course, they could all maintain a dignified silence and simply ignore my pleas to join the party but what if they also hated this Web 2.0 ‘meme’ but were too shy, polite and retiring to tell me what they really thought. I know a handful of ‘bloggers’ but have only met two in the flesh and (thankfully) slept with neither.While I did discover some new blogs of interest, not necessarily because of the ‘8 things’, I must admit that I quickly tired of hearing about people’s job history, favourite cars, mental and physical disorders (mild or otherwise), alternative careers, wild death defying adventures and the fact they once killed a man with their bare hands in the Burmese jungle.So why, I hear you ask, did I capitulate, run towards the cliff and conjure up a disposable blog entry titled ‘8 things’ ? Well, the truth is I thought it was a cheap post, I was short on inspiration and there was some elements I wanted to write about which don’t merit a full blog post but were better suited to a short bullet point.I followed your analysis, comments and thoughts with interest (for the first couple of days at least). I continued to read your blog, I tracked your posts on c.d.o.s, I monitored your comments on other blogs. When I saw your detailed analysis, use of analogies and various lengthy responses and compared with it my paltry, throwaway one-liners, I felt like a troll.I occasionally commented myself and you normally responded. Not, I suspect to get the last word but you genuinely care. A lot. I admired your passion and felt somehow inadequate that I had spontaneously chosen to respond to what some Oracle bloggers (unwisely IMHO) had termed a ‘chain letter’, ’spam’ or a ‘game’.I am genuinely sorry that you have decided to shut down your site as (as I have stated before) your blog, forums and articles represent an invaluable set of technical resources for anyone working with Oracle.I am sorry if my trite comment on your blog that I ‘hadn’t signed up to your terms and conditions when I started my blog’ irritated you and may have, in some small way, contributed towards your decision.However, just as it is your prerogative to close your site down, I have the same right to post about my travel nightmares, ‘47 things’, my thoughts on Newcastle’s new manager or Scoble’s laugh.Particularly, as my blog is not (currently) aggregated by OraNA and hence will not contaminate or interrupt the stream of consciousness.Mind you, never say never.Andy [...]
Raj said
The articles always worked out without any hassle.Those were thoroughly tested and saved much to my time and embrassment when I used to hit a production issue and also when I had to configure a new setup.
Thanks Rogers for all the information you shared.
Some of your articles are saved in my machine and many are not which will surely be missed.
regards
Raj
lars said
Hi, does anyone have any documents saved from Dizwells articles? I used to look at the called Installing 10g Release 2 on Ubuntu (Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake)…and wanted to to check this today again…Anyone have this saved or know where I could find it?
Cheers
Lars