I was emailed a couple of weeks or so ago that I was awarded membership of the Oracle ACE program for now until end of May 2026 and yesterday I received the email/pdf version of my ACE certificate. Great to be part of the ACE program again for another.
Today as I write this its the 26th June 2025; the 29th June is coming up on Sunday and that is a day that has two events for me.
The first connection to June 29th was 30 years ago and is that I passed my degree in Electronic and electrical systems on June 29th 1995 and got a first class honours. I got an average mark in all subjects of 79.xx % over the whole degree course. in Some subjects in some years I got 100% mark; for instance in Math in the first year. My final year project was writing a multi-tasking operating system in C and some intel assembler for low level tasks. The OS also had a TUI (Text User Interface) that was similar in style to products like Borland C++ or Turbo Pascal. So windows and menus and dialogs and status bars etc but in direct memory access and using text characters written direct to the screen. The OS also had obviously multi-tasking and also inter process communication with semaphores, task blocks, task switching, system calls, waits, messages between applications and more. It was possible to create a demo program that ran 4 or more separate programs running each in separate TUI windows and using sync and messaging between processes.
I started to write the OS on 13th June 1994 as the first entry in my log book one showed and the last entry in log book 2 showed the 11th May 1995:
The photo shows my two log books and my actual degree project / thesis that was handed in. The thesis was 294 pages long and I was told by the printers mine was way bigger than anyone else's.
I got a first class honours degree in electronics and also won the IEEE prize for the best student in this category across the country for 1995. BUT, i have not used the details of the degree since I completed it as I was made redundant from my job as a designer in the railway and I moved into IT and programming and eventually into Oracle security which of course I still do today.
My second connection to June 29th was 49 years years ago when my friend Paul and I were at Selby railway station and we watched Deltic 55004 on the 17:00 from London Kings Cross pass Selby at 19:15 and a half:
As the report shows and as I remember. We saw something big dragging on the floor from one of the carriages (numbered E6111). We decided to report this to the station manager who didn't believe us at first as we were 13 years old. We showed him how the dragging piece had ripped big chunks of wood from the crossing next to the swing bridge and then he believed us. He telephoned the signal man and had the train stopped. The side of the bogie frame was dragging on the floor as the axle end had sheared off. The train was stopped about 6 miles north of Selby and was not yet at full speed. We stopped an express train from almost certainly crashing
We became big news and there were articles in every major newspaper and also local ones. The press came to see us at home and other places. Here is a couple of articles from the time. First the Daily Mail
And an article after one of the trips:
This picture shows Paul and I after we went on a free trip from York to London Paddington and then on a brand new (at the time) HST to Bristol and back to York. We had a man from York railway PR accompany us on the trip. The photo was taken by the press when we got back. We were given some brochures for the HST and the railway museum in York. I still have these:
We also had a trip before that with British Railways who took us in a cab ride to London in a class 47 and then for lunch in the post office tower revolving restaurant:
One thing that stands out now is why did the press make so many mistakes (names wrong, spelled wrong, ages wrong and more) and also why did they print our addresses in national newspapers.
Some time later Selby council also awarded us a silver limited Selby Abbey Festival medal:
It was nice to get a medal and have free trips but the best thing was saving peoples lives at the time.
Sorry, not much Oracle security in this post; Some posts coming soon though on new Oracle Security research; the key vault for DBMS_CRYPTO and more on an interpreter written in PL/SQL and a new subject. I have quite a lot of blog materials ready to post when i get a chance over the coming weeks.
June the 29th seems to be a lucky day for me, passing my 1st class honours degree 30 years ago on that date and stopping a train crash 49 years ago
#oracleace #oracle #security #traincrash #degree #electronics #june29th
