Colin Charles Agenda

I bit the bullet, and picked up an Asus Eee PC today, while I failed at an attempt to get a rack. Its a 4GB model, with the webcam, and its on its 3rd run, i.e. I’ve got a model without a mini-PCIe connector. The slot is there, but the connector itself is missing - really, silly of them (can you actually save that much money, on a connector?). This batch arrived at OfficeWorks around 27/12/2007 from what I can tell (that’s whats written on the box), and its a 7C model (basically, the only model you get the mini-PCIe connector was the 7A one).

For what it’s worth, OfficeWorks and The Good Guys are price-matched for the Eee PC, while JB-HiFi comes next, with Myer holding the top retail price. Of course, all this is pending you actually getting to a store with stock of the item - I picked mine up from OfficeWorks, in Prahan (South Melbourne for instance, was out of stock).

Now, on to the machine.

Pros:

• You pop the battery in, and the boot-up process is near instantaneous, because its booting from a SSD.
• Standard applications ship with it: Pidgin for IM, Skype for
  video-chat, OpenOffice.org for all your office needs, Acrobat Reader
  for PDFs (why not just evince?) and a whole bunch more.
• The trackpad works perfectly, and even though
  there is only “one” mouse button, it provides a 2-button interface.
• Its nice to have a laptop where suspend and resume work out of
  the box.
• The external display, just works (adjusting to the size
  of the external display, as opposed to mirroring for instance).
• The power supply is very smart. You can remove the Australian plug, and
  see a US-based plug beneath. Either way, it can be used on most modern
  airlines now, even in economy (if you’re on a quality airline, like
  Singapore Airlines, for instance).
• There’s a carrying case that comes in the box, which I’m sure will be handy when I’m about to throw it into my backpack.

Cons:

• The child-like interface, that is almost comparable to, if not worse, than what Sugar will offer you.
• You might be tempted to then say, “Computer Web”, to then hear the voice of a lady then say “Web” fairly softly, and launch Firefox. Not too impressive - for example, I had the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing in the background, and in my limited use of voice control, I managed to even open up the Clock when I wanted the web browser.
• I tried the dictionary. Its nice to know there actually is an offline dictionary, but its really not too usable. The Longman dictionary is probably ideal if you were speaking/reading/writing Chinese, but I’d have taken an Oxford, or even a Webster’s anyday.
• The keyboard itself, is a tad small, but one will be able to get used
  to it. The positioning of the right Shift key, is not optimal, and I’ve
  seen hacks of people replacing the keys (physically!) and then making
  use of Xmodmap to fix it.
• 800×480 is a tough resolution to get used to. Sure, you’ve got a 7″ screen, but its an odd resolution, and some websites tend not to render properly at this resolution any longer (which is sad).

I wanted a lot more than Xandros could offer me. About the only time I felt at home, was when I hit Ctrl+Alt+T (for the Terminal). At this point, I thought of either installing Ubuntu or Fedora; naturally, I went with the latter, something called Eeedora. More about this, in another post.

What do I think of the machine? Overall, I like it. Its a great sub-notebook. Haven’t tried the battery out yet, but I hear I’ll get about 3 hours of juice from it.

I definitely need to upgrade the RAM - 512MB just doesn’t cut it in this modern world, and a 2GB chip is pretty affordable these days. While I’m there, I might as well get a nice big USB thumb drive, as well as a huge SD card (the slot does SDHC, so maybe some 8GB will be nice?).

Happy to have supported yet another vendor, doing good things with Linux. Go Asus! (similarly, go Nokia for all your beta-quality tablet devices, Dell for Linux laptops [that still haven't reached the APAC region], and I’m sure I’m missing some vendors, but I’ve not purchased from them.)

Technorati Tags: asus, eeepc, eee, asus eee pc, review, 7c, linux

It seems more than half the adult Australian population is overweight (thats a BMI between 25-29.9) or obese (that’s a BMI of over 30). Worse, most are in denial:

“Overweight or obese men and women are increasingly likely to see themselves as having an acceptable weight,” the bureau says in its latest report on obesity.

I’m not in denial. BMI is currently 26.54, which is alarming (by my standards, anyway). An ideal BMI is at most, 24.9, which realistically means shedding about 6-7KG. And more importantly keeping it that way.

It was that way in November 2007. Trip to Kuala Lumpur, coupled with all the trips around the world, has made me put on that much. Sigh.

Goal: Reduce 5KG by Q1/2008.

To achieve it? Cut down on food intake (well, watch what goes in, anyway), exercise (jogging seems viable). Seeing lots of vegetarian friends, thats always a thought, but there’s too much good tasting food in this world, to go completely veggie, IMHO.

When buying my Dell Inspiron 640m, I wanted to ensure I was getting a good warranty. It turns out, I finally had to use it, and all I can say is that its been a pretty great experience!

The left mouse button on my touchpad decided to give up the ghost, and just stayed depressed all the time. It worked fine, but not getting tactile feedback was annoying. So I submitted a problem report at 4.20am on the 23/01/2008. I got a phone call back at about 6pm, on the 23rd, asking me when would be a good time for Dell to come over. I stated Friday, and made a note that the LCD hinge on the right hand side felt loose, and maybe it deserved a replacement. They made a note of that.

On the 24th, I was called, to confirm that I’d be available on the 25th, and it would be great to choose a booking time. I chose 11am-2pm. On the 25th, at about 12.10pm, I get a call saying the technician will be around soon, and he’ll call when he’s about a half hour away. I say thats great, and head out for some lunch at Soda Rock.

Back by 1pm, the technician comes at 1.30pm, and starts working. He’s done by 2.15pm, having basically taken out my laptop to bits, and reassembling it. I got the palmrest changed, seeing that the entire thing had to be replaced to fix the mouse. The LCD hinge alone can’t be replaced, so the whole casing itself got replaced (save for the LCD, of course). This meant that all my stickers disappeared!

The laptop looks like new now. It even got a clean (all the dust inside, removed). Surprisingly, the keyboard hasn’t given up the ghost or anything, but the technician told me that it probably will give way in time, and they’ll be around to fix it ;)

How do I feel? Thrilled with Dell, I am. No regrets with their warranty service, and I probably will now only buy Dell hardware for machines that I care about.

Technorati Tags: dell, warranty, inspiron 640m

Doing a bit of procrastinating while packing, I found some notes from an old MODM talk that I thought I’d transcribe. Its the differences between a manager or a leader…

• Manager… responds to change, is reactive. Leader… creates and shapes change, is proactive
• Manager… future-taker, path-taker. Leader… future-maker, path-maker
• Manager… cautious about risk. Leader… careful about risk
• Manager… does the thing right. Leader… does the right thing
• Manager… guided by fate. Leader… guided by destiny
• Manager… controls actions and events. Leader… facilitates actions and events
• Manager… works in the organisation. Leader… works on the organisation
• Manager… prophet: informed and motivated by understanding and predicting trends; asking why? Leader… visionary: informed and motivated by imagining the future and the future self; asking why not?
• Manager… probable-futurist: asks what will the future be like? Leader… preferred-futurist: asks what should/could the future be like
• Manager… problem-centered strategist. Leader… mission-directed strategist

The above is worth mulling over. What do you want 2008 to be for you?

I for one, don’t normally spend time writing goals for the year. Today morning, I found myself doing just that. Now, its time to get off my butt, and get things done.

Peter posted that CentOS comes with a build of MySQL Enterprise. It should really be clarified that CentOS itself, comes with MySQL Community, as does Red Hat Enterprise Linux. On RHEL5/CentOS5, you’ll see:

mysql-5.0.22-2.2.el5_1.1
mysql-server-5.0.22-2.2.el5_1.1

The above are the default packages that CentOS provides. However, what Peter really is referring to is the CentOSPlus Repository, which by their own admittance is “not part of the upstream distribution and extend CentOS’s functionality at the expense of upstream compatibility. Enabling this repository makes CentOS different from upstream.”

The idea behind providing Enterprise builds, largely came from RHBZ#230412: No src.rpm available for mysql. Red Hat provides something called the Web Application Stacks product (RHWAS), in where they include MySQL Enterprise, amongst other software packages, and they charge for support (that differs from buying just a RHEL license). Max Spevack answers it pretty well, as this is the response he came to, after talking to folk at MySQL.

Its worth noting that CentOSPlus does not use Enterprise tarballs/SRPMS, but use sources from the BitKeeper tree. Its worth noting, that at the time of this writing, CentOSPlus does not include Enterprise RPMs for CentOS 5, just CentOS 4. Its also worth noting that patches are being applied, that are out of tree, to the RPMs. A snippet from the RPM changelog (rpm -q –changelog <packagename> if you must):

* Mon Dec 24 2007 Johnny Hughes <johnny@centos.org> 5.0.54-1.el4.centos
- upgraded to the 5.0.54 Enterprise BK tree. Removed patches that are
already incorporated into 5.0.54.

- added mysql-5.0.52-mysqldump-hang-33057.patch for mysql bug #33057

- added mysql-5.0.50-openssl-handshake-33050.patch fo mysql bug #33050

* Sun Dec 23 2007 Johnny Hughes <johnny@centos.org> 5.0.48-3.el4.centos
- modified the process of obtaining the Enterprise Sources to using bkf and
downloading directly from the MySQL Enterprise BitKeeper tree.

So, definitely interesting times. If you hit a bug, you might be wondering if its an upstream bug, or something that was provided by your packager. Of course, this is what is so great about the MySQL community - the ability to do just this! Currently, against 5.0.54, CentOSPlus is shipping 2 patches, with a few extra source packages that don’t come with regular tarballs. Will this number grow? Just remember, the “Enterprise” version you get in CentOSPlus is not “MySQL Enterprise”.

Technorati Tags: centos, mysql, distributions shipping mysql, patches

Khairil talks about server downtime, and I can attest to that (hogwarts is just above gambit). The Dell arrived on Friday, popped Centos 5.1 on it, realised that if you ticked “Virtualization”, you ended up not getting a regular kernel (no big deal, eh?). Configured it as best as could be configured, then headed out to the data center on Saturday morning. This after some fiasco of sleeping for under 4-hours, seeing that I was out on Friday night.

Removed the old box, installed the new one, everything came up, and life was dandy. Went over to C-ZONE in Low Yat to get my disk exchanged - it was one-to-one, seeing that it was within the first week. Very nice. Remotely configured the box with Zimbra again, and ZCS 5.0 is working fine. Its great to see that Zimbra figured out what the problem was with the RHEL4/CentOS4 installs of Zimbra. Fixed up the database, restored the websites, all remotely - I wonder if this kind of magic works in Windows land? I just love Unixes.

The Dell box is a 64-bit box, with full virtualization support. Question now is: how do I get more IPv4 IPs if the ISP only gives you one? While there’s some negotiation going on so I can get more, it’d be a shame if I had to create some Xen VMs to be IPv6 only.

Incidentally, if anyone wanted to see what a RAID failed device looks like, here’s some output:

[root@hogwarts ~]# mdadm -D /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
Version : 00.90.03
Creation Time : Mon Jan 7 02:49:59 2008
Raid Level : raid1
Array Size : 485203072 (462.73 GiB 496.85 GB)
Device Size : 485203072 (462.73 GiB 496.85 GB)
Raid Devices : 2
Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
Persistence : Superblock is persistent

Update Time : Wed Jan 9 19:44:45 2008
State : clean, degraded
Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 1
Failed Devices : 1
Spare Devices : 0

UUID : a502d8a1:724a68ab:cac9860f:943d44a5
Events : 0.22190

Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
0 0 0 0 removed
1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1

2 8 3 - faulty spare /dev/sda3

[root@hogwarts ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdb1[1] sda3[2](F)
485203072 blocks [2/1] [_U]

unused devices: <none>

Technorati Tags: raid, dell, centos, ipv4, xen, sysadmin

The great Interwebs have caused my tabs to expand, but here are a few bits I think a lot of you will find useful.
(Should’ve posted this about a week ago, but somehow, it never made it)

• Joel Spolsky’s Travel Survival Guide - Joel recently went on a tour to promote FogBugz, and he comes up with some sensible tips. His air travel tips might be a little too technical, but the fact that they fly first class alone, interests me greatly. As someone that spends a great amount of time in a tin can, in coach might I add, I can appreciate companies that place you in business or first class. Large companies like IBM and HP generally have policies of placing anyone flying longer than n hours in business class - open source companies haven’t quite got the hang of this yet.
• A month with FreeBSD, Zope and Plone - KageSenshi is a Fedora contributor, and currently works as an intern at Inigo Tech, the company started by my friend, Khairil. Main focus: Zope, Plone, and FreeBSD. The blog entry is interesting, because you can see that he enjoys interning for Inigo, is gladly willing to provide free publicity for Inigo, and it seems like he’s truly proud working for a startup. Thats a feeling a lot of employees in larger organisations don’t seem to have any longer - they just become corporate drones, IMHO. Here’s wishing Khairil and Inigo all the best in keeping the startup feeling alive and kicking.
• Why Comp Sci Grads Can’t Hack (and why you need them anyway…) - Its refreshing seeing this in words, from someone else, other than me. Reading this, and the article that spurred it: Is Computer Science Dying? > Computer Scientists Can’t Program! can be pretty useful. A 3-4 year bachelors teaches you an array of languages and concepts, that in the end, one becomes something of a “know it all”, yet not an expert in any domain. There is just no room for you to become an expert, because the curriculum just isn’t free-flowing. Writing a library management system over and over again, in a different language even, just makes no sense at all, does it? (I picked on a library management system because Ditesh, Prabu and I had a good laugh about this yesterday).
• CCPlus - This is Creative Commons at its best. I can do a By-Attribution-Non-Commercial, and also add a +Company Commercial License. This is what I’ve wanted for a few years. Now, when will Flickr implement this? In fact, sharing the original sizes for CC-licensed things on Flickr has always bugged me - I’m fine with everything but the original size (duh, I upload original JPGs). This will also be fancy for work, like training materials. I have a feeling I’ll be using this one very, very soon.

Hmm. I’ve spent about 31 hours in flight and in transit, to get to Orlando, Florida. Good news is that I’ve arrived, all safe and dandy.

Singapore Airlines is now flying the A340-500 to Los Angeles or San Francisco, from Singapore. Its truly got to be the best plane for long haul flights. Notice that you get direct flights to America? No more transiting in Narita. I was given a seat in Executive Economy Class (I wonder why? Maybe its because of my collected miles/status, as it used to and still does happen on United, a Star Alliance partner). What’s cool there? Power. Yes, nice, in-flight power, suitable for devices that support 110V (read: all modern laptop PSUs).

Food was great (new menus), and I tried the much recommended Singapore Sling, and realised that it tastes pretty darn good. Highly recommended if you’re on Singapore Airlines anytime soon. Oh immigration - long queues at LAX as usual, however, they’re still taking 2 fingerprints, as opposed to 10. Odd?

United was acceptable as usual. No personal video screens, no power, but at least its those nicer/larger Economy Plus seats. I sincerely think that the best Star Alliance airline has got to be Singapore Air (trust me, Lufthansa doesn’t come close).

Kaj, and the Village MySQL banner

Arrived in Orlando, the pick-up was ready, and check-in was quick. As I was about to head to my room, I bumped into Kaj, and decided that I’d join him for registration and breakfast. Got to meet quite a few new hires, though we mostly ended up talking to Marten and Monty.

MySQL: The Future is Wide Open

After breakfast, I bumped into Giuseppe and Trudy. Was good to see Giuseppe and catch up (I’m sure we’ll be doing a lot more of that this month). At this point I was getting tired, and my legs were aching. Found my room (very nice, pictures on Flickr of course), tried to nap, failed, and visited the Mandara Spa. Had a quick massage, a good shower, and now I think I’m ready to rest. No, I think I’ll go get some sun in first. This jet lag thing-magic can be beaten!

Technorati Tags: mysql, acm2008