Amnesia

Although I was able to eliminate it as a possibility late last year, I can now confirm I'm suffering from memory loss. However, the nice people at Crucial will be replacing the faulty component free of charge under their rather good Lifetime Warranty.

I'm quite lucky they have a couple of sticks of the relevant type of memory still in stock, as I originally bought it in November 2001.

Refactoring Databases

Martin Fowler has just announced a book called Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design in his "signature" series - that is, he didn't write it, but he says it's OK.

Modifying database schemas is a definite pain point, and I predict that this book, if it lives up to its stated aim, will be a must have on many developers' bookshelves. Having relatively standardised methods for incremental migration from one database schema to another will be useful whether you're maintaining and updating internal databases, or designing upgrade procedures for commercial products. I look forward to having this book to refer to.