The dates have been set for the Chelmsford winter beer festival 2014. It starts at 5pm on Wednesday 19th of February and finishes at 11pm on Saturday 22nd February. The same as last year, the event will be held at King Edward VI Grammar School, Broomfield Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 3SX.

Please read on or see the official CAMRA site for further information.

Oracle have released Database 12c Release 1 (version 12.1.0.1.0). Of particular note is the multi-tenant database facility. Each server has one container database (CDB), and that CDB may have one or more pluggable databases (PDBs).

Following an upgrade of Debian on my Asus WL-500W I had an unbootable system. Restoring from backups gave me some breathing space but I really needed to move forward with the Debian upgrade and find out why the system was not booting. Some instructions and some online and in-store purchases had me up and running just two days later.

Linux Journal has published a simple to understand introduction to MapReduce using Hadoop. Definitely worth a read if you need an introduction.

Zorba The Greek Takeaway
31–32 Viaduct Road
Chelmsford
Essex CM1 1TS

zorbathegreek.co.uk

After nearly two months of development, testing, and planning, the new version of this web site has now gone live. The main benefit you will see is an improved mobile experience due to the reactive style sheets.

There's not much time until The Ale House late May Bank Holiday beer festival 2013, which starts on Thursday 23rd of May and finishes on Monday 27th May. The event will be held at ​​The Ale House, ​24–26 Viaduct Street, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1TS. Telephone 01245 260535.

Debian 7.0 Wheezy has been released. The release notes are available now.

House of China – Oriental Buffet and Take Away
19–21 Crouch Street
Colchester
Essex C03 3EN

This is a brief review on the Toshiba mini retractable laser mouse (part number PA3569E-1ETA). There's not really much information out there about this mouse. I picked it up through Amazon for just over £10 with free delivery. For use with Ubuntu GNU/Linux, I wanted something that would work out of the box without requiring pointless drivers. It also needed the middle button to work (most mice are sold as only two-button).