Colin Charles Agenda

Last year when I purchased my MacBook Pro, it was about three weeks before Snow Leopard was to come out. Essentially the upgrade DVD was free and has been sitting on my desk for the better part of the year.

So I finally bit the bullet and upgraded. A few things of note:

• The upgrade took quite some time. It was in excess of an hour, and I noticed it stalled from time to time. I whipped out the log file and realised that it was repairing the disk quite a bit. Had I not noticed this, I would have assumed something had gone wrong and rebooted the computer. Command+L gives you the log.
• iTunes got a library update (it takes quite some time).
• Evernote got a database upgrade.
• My git went missing, so I had to reinstall it. Bazaar was however still gainfully installed.
• MenuMeters disappeared. I had to get a more modern version online to ensure it continued working.
• There was a huge combo update waiting for me, to take me from OS X 10.6 to 10.6.4. It nearly weighed in at a gigabyte.
• Mail, which has been handling my mail since I ditched Thunderbird, went through a rather lengthy database upgrade. While it upgraded, I could not use mail. This process was about one hour long as well, which I felt took too long.

After over two hours, all I can say is my laptop is a lot snappier than it was before. Everything works as expected. I guess its time to start rolling it out on the iMac, and probably clean installing the MacBook Air for travel use.

Update: 16-09-2010 – Needed to reinstall Quicksilver, to B58, since the older release seemed buggy.

Today I installed iTunes 10. Apple has stopped requiring you to reboot your computer the moment you get an iTunes upgrade – I consider this a plus point. Its now sporting a new logo, and things look a little more polished in the application.

Noticing no Ping, which seemed to be all the rage in the morning, I wondered what the cause might be. Quite clearly, you don’t get in on Ping, Apple’s new social network, if they don’t run an iTunes Music Store in your country! The moment I made the change to my US-based iTunes account, all seemed to be OK, and I could start playing around with Ping.

Then it became clearer why they didn’t want me to use Ping. “Each time you purchase, review, rate or like music on the iTunes Store, it will appear here” (so it said on my profile). At the moment, Ping does not fit my use case – I rip audio CDs that I purchase, and they have information within iTunes thanks to the CDDB database it syncs with. I have never purchased music from the iTunes Music Store, because I cannot be bothered with using a foreign credit card or looking for iTunes gift certificates.

Does this in any way hamper last.fm/AudioScrobbler? Probably a little, considering Ping is built-into iTunes. Plus you can follow your favourite artistes ;-) Does this mean people will quit last.fm for Ping? I find it highly unlikely. But last.fm is probably on their toes now, since there’s some overlap – concert recommendations, etc. Ping also is run within iTunes, you can’t use a web browser. There does not seem to be any API either.

Then, people got excited with Apple’s new Apple TV. I didn’t. Its not international. OK, not international enough. I can still buy the old Apple TV from the Malaysian or Singaporean Apple Store. The new ones seem to be available for sale in Australia, UK, the US, and probably a few other countries where you can rent/buy movies from the store.

The iPod Touch? Some good changes, but the camera isn’t all that hip. Good enough for FaceTime. Speaking of FaceTime, it is apparently based on open standards. Steve Jobs said something like it will be open. When will Apple release some information about how others can independently implement FaceTime? Or inter-operate with FaceTime?

Game Center looks interesting. Social gaming is going to be big (also, big in iOS4.1). The new iPhone 4’s don’t have iOS4.1 yet, but when the update comes (next week?), you will get Game Center too. And the iPod touch should be fast – sporting an A4 chip. Apple has successfully made devices do multiple things (iPod touch: music player, game machine, video conferencing tool, etc.). Would I buy one? I’m still too smitten with my iPad, so much so I haven’t used my 1st generation iPod Touch since April 2010!

The new iPod Nano looks cool. Its a pity they’ve removed the camera. And the shuffle, well, its a shuffle – I’ve never owned one.

So the Apple Music event turned out to mostly be a bummer, unless you live in a country where the iTunes Music Store is available.

I’ve been going around China for much of my vacation, and one thing that amazes me is the work ethic of the Chinese people.

China is well known for having its one-child per family policy. Once you leave the main hub cities, you are generally allowed to have two children, especially if the first child is a girl.

When you visit a trader, you see a husband and wife team running the store. They also usually have at least one child, who joins them at their store. What happened to the grandparents you might ask? Quite simply, living the entrepreneurial dream and also operating stores of their own, hence finding no time to look after their grandchildren.

What amazed me? A child sleeping on a trolley cart, with just a little cloth to act as a blanket. Another child sleeping on cardboard, with just a little cloth to act as a blanket. Children no older than three, helping their parents sort out items they have received from wholesalers.

I read in the newspapers about the story of a cobbler who went to Shanghai. He earns about RMB1,000 per month. He spends RMB300 per month on rent (he shares a room with four others), and he spends another RMB300 on food (he says he has two man tau for lunch). He saves RMB400 per month. That’s a 40% savings rate. He has a family far away from Shanghai (about 8 hours by train), and he’s OK with living away from them.

We went to get a massage. It was to last a total of 90 minutes and it would cost us a mere RMB75. Do you know what a massage therapist gets paid? RMB17 per customer for 90 minutes of hard work. None of them are also local, preferring to come from towns about 5 hours away. There are no benefits, there are no rest days, and there is no daily wage – if you have no customers, you’re straight out of luck. You do however get lunch or dinner depending on which shift you take.

Quick calculations show that at RMB17/90 minutes, if you can massage 4 customers a day, you walk away with RMB68/day. Do that for 22 days (an average work month), and you’ve got about RMB1,500, without tips. This is more than a Foxconn employee making high value items like iPhones, iPads, and more get per month as a base salary! Yes, there have been increases recently (sometime in May 2010), and you can make a bit more via overtime.

There are showrooms and warehouses that do not ever close. They operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can go in at anytime you please to take a look at their products.

Traders or workers, everyone does their job with lots of zeal and a smile on their faces. They’re working hard. They’re saving hard. The entrepreneurial spirit is just alive and kicking.

All this provides great inspiration. It makes you want to strive as hard. The Chinese work ethic amazes me, and there is a lot to learn from them.

We’re at OSCON and today has been fabulous – I’ve just been connecting with old friends, and making new friends, and all this is what makes the travel experience completely worthwhile. If you’re at OSCON, why not come to a couple of BoF’s:

1. MariaDB: The Community Fork of MySQL at 8pm on Monday 19/07/2010. Great for a general overview of MariaDB, for beginners to the advanced folk to come to.
2. MariaDB: Features In-depth at 9pm on Wednesday 21/07/2010. Great if you’re a more intermediate to advanced user of MySQL/MariaDB and want to know more about the additional features MariaDB has to offer, and what else it might offer in the near future (i.e. what are you requesting).

A big shoutout to the openSUSE team: openSUSE 11.3 has been released! And with it comes a choice for the database users out there – you can now choose between MySQL or MariaDB.

I wrote in February 2010 that MariaDB was in the unstable repository for openSUSE, and was informed by Michal that it would be included a little while ago. The version that is shipping is MariaDB 5.1.44, and why not give it a download?

So try it. Install via zypper in mariadb.

Remember the idea behind renaming Maria, the storage engine? People regularly get confused with Maria the storage engine, and MariaDB the database. We got a whole lot of good names, and here’s a short-listed amount of names (short-listed by Monty Program employees down to about 15), and now its up to YOU to help us choose what the new name should be. Quick, go take the survey.

Voting ends on Friday, July 9, 2010, at 23:59UTC.

The winner will be announced on the first day of OSCON on July 19 2010. The winner walks away with a Meerkat net-top from System76.