Archive for November 15th, 2007

David Axmark in Singapore

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

David Axmark, co-founder of MySQL, is in Singapore, and has allocated some free time to meet MySQL users. If you were in the Lion City, and had an afternoon free, I suggest dropping by.

When:Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 12:00 PM

Where:GeekTerminal
55 Market Street #01-01 Singapore 048941
Singapore
+65 65570098 

(Map: http://www.geekterminal.com/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=41)

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Leaving the sticks…

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Well, Notting Hill/Clayton North isn’t exactly the sticks, but I’m leaving it soon (after five years of living on the same street, moving once, across the road, basically). Next January, I’ll be having a fresh start, in a fresh neighbourhood. I’ll be living on Chapel St., South Yarra. I have a 2-bedroom apartment, a gym and pool on-site, and will be living by myself.

No more house mates. No more WiFi access in the garage while my car is still parked (my car will have to be in a parking lot). I guess its kind of starting a new era.

Its both an exciting and tumultuous time. I’ve got a mental list of what I need to buy: fridge, microwave, dryer, washing machine, huge honking LCD TV, futon. Then, the moving the stuff I currently own - figure a removalist is what I really want.

Which brings me to packing. Boxing up my life now, because I have much travel to do from now till then, is so weird. I own way too many books. And clearing out the trash, asking myself if I’ve used something in the last n-months, and getting rid of it. Realise I probably have heaps to dish out on eBay at some stage in the future.

Connecting my own electricity. Gas. Paying monthly maintenance fees (which is basically similar to the rent I’m paying now, but includes free water). The irony? Settlement date is in late December, and I’ll only pick up the keys in late January.

Lesson learnt: I need to start living a minimalist life.

Writing talks…

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

I have two talks in the coming few weeks, that I’m still madly writing. I’ve come to the realisation that writing talks, really does take a lot of time (when you have a deadline). Especially, if you’re doing it my style - everytime I write a slide, and find something missing in the Wiki, I go ahead and fix it. So its not actually talk writing I’m doing, but expansion of our online documentation, and keeping it in check. That takes time.

  • Enhancing Competitiveness Through Technology - I’m giving this talk at the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) Annual Conference 2007. Their conference is themed around “Enhancing Competitiveness Through Technology & Law Reforms – The Next 50 Years” and is on the 19-20 November 2007, at the KL Convention Centre. My talk is on the 20th, as I’ll be on a plane on the 19th. This is targeted at CEO/manager level, so is lighter on tech-related content, but more concepts. Come see me in a suit :)
  • Paying It Forward: Harnessing the MySQL Contributory Resources - I’m giving this talk at foss.in, it will have a localised title, with regards to the much hyped architecture of participation. MySQL has done some amazing things to “open up” for external contributions, and clearly, we continue to do so, and we must celebrate it, obviously. And get more contributors. I also submitted this talk for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008, because I think a lot of folk attending will want to know the many ways to contribute to MySQL. We’ve done some great things, and we need to pimp it more. Targeted at the contributor, with some pretty diagrams and patches, yanked off the internals list.

The slide deck and speaker notes will be online, in due time. Part of yet another cool project I’m working on, in where we enable others to give MySQL-related talks.