Voice fade: When I was teaching classes (8 hours/day x 5 days in a row), I would ask the venue staff to bring me a pitch of water with NO ICE at the start of each day, and a lemon. (Usually I'd have to send back two or three pitchers with ice before they got the idea). Squeeze the lemon into the water, and sip through the day. I usually went through 2-3 pitchers per day.
In addition to keeping your voice going, this has the benefit of reminding you to give the students bathroom breaks.
Nice one Mike! Thanks.
On voice fades:
I used to teach computers in the army, so I was talking 12 hours a day. Things which helped me out:
- Practice!! You will get used to it. The strain isn't the vocal cords as much as it is on the lungs. Think of it as exercise....
- Don't talk in a monotone. Being monotonic isn't only very boring, but it is also more tiring for the voice.
- During breaks, take a few slow,deep breaths. It helps your lungs just like stretching can help your shoulders during long debugging sessions :)
There is an oracle provider using the OracleClient namespace in the messageboard section of DAABv3.0 last time I checked. I haven't found one using ODP.NET, however.
The afforementioned guy was me, and I was also the one to bring up the two questions you mentioned. I was just about to go sifting through Google to find out the answers when I figured you might already have, turns out you saved me a bit of time. So thanks again! :-)
Oh, by the way, my site is currently down (looking for a host). You can reach me at tomerg at bigmail dot co dot il.
Mike,
I am glad you enjoy my post of DAAB. I spend some time researching and making sure that I can write code that will migrate from ADO.NET 1.x to ADO 2.x model.
Thanks for mentioning the blog :)
Maxim
[www.ipattern.com do you?]
Voice: check www.vocalcoach.com for the "Complete Breathing" and "Complete Warmup" CDs.
If someone wants to write an ODP Helper, I'll be glad to include it in the 3.1 release. I don't have the resources at the moment to mess with it myself. If you need help wirting a helper, I'm currently working on a HOWTO for this. It probably won't make it into the next 3.1 beta, but you can contact me directly at cjbreisch@yahoo.com if you have any questions. Looking at the code for the other helpers will probably tell you everything you need to know, though.
Thanks for mentioning this and the beta on your blog!