Colin Charles Agenda

I’m looking forward to being at Percona Live Santa Clara 2014 later this year (April 1-4 2014). You should definitely register now. Early bird ends soon, and if you’re looking for a discount, here’s a 10% discount code – SeeMeSpeak. 

SkySQL will have a booth. I’m hoping the DotOrg Pavillions continue, so that MariaDB can have a booth too.

If you want to know about MariaDB 10, come to the complete tutorial given by Ivan Zoratti and me. MariaDB 10 clearly has differences and its worth noting them, and embracing the new features.

I will also speak about Automated MySQL Failover with MHA: Getting Started and Moving Past Its Quirks. There are changes to allow it to work with GTID, there’s a script floating around that has a resource agent for MHA, and there have been even more deployments to talk about. 

I’ll plan my calendar of talks soon, but in the meantime, don’t forget to register now, and there’s a 10% discount – SeeMeSpeak.

I wish more discussion happened on the internals mailing list, but if you’re interested in finding out what’s upcoming/changing in MySQL 5.7, so far the best resources I’ve found are:

• The video (1h41m is worth a watch), and blog post from Todd Farmer
• A presentation from Morgan Tocker (I wonder if we’ll see this at FOSDEM too)
• All of Morgan Tocker’s posts tagged community
• The 5.7 release notes (in particular the change log)

I like this “train” development model, but I wonder how it really syncs with the labs releases. Multi-source replication is still against 5.7.2?

• A potential to end HIV/AIDS: Pledge to the Immunity Project.
• A designer tells you how to knock off his luxury bags. Harder than it looks :-)
• Diabetes is everywhere; a smart contact lens from Google? Looks interesting. I’m not sure diabetics are allowed to wear contact lenses to begin with, but I have to say, interesting to watch.
• Blogger nails a major problem with facebook’s newsfeed – I can’t agree more. Why do people buy fans? Why do people then buy post boosts? He wants his Facebook friends back.
• Why Southeast Asia’s Boom is a Bubble-Driven Illusion. 
• I really enjoyed reading this Jason Calacanis piece about how techbrats do not represent the tech industry. This is a great piece; Malaysia (and even Asia) can learn a lot from this.
• The Google Technology Stack is a pretty good read. It’s missing information on Spanner, but I’d say it’s a good resource.
• How to become uber productive while working for yourself. It talks a lot about fake work (browsing, etc.), email isn’t work (yes!), how to set good goals, but what stands out is the grouping of tasks (that I think is unique/smart). I wish that when I’m in KL I can walk around more, though that’s where I drive; but in newer cities, this makes a lot of sense. And of course, close those tabs!
• The one reason why most startups fail. Quite simply, this whole “building runway” and trying to monetize users is a tough business (the exception, not the rule). It’s like they say in Jerry McGuire, “Show me the money!!!”.
• UK Government plans to switch from Microsoft Office to open source. They spent over 200m UKP since 2010 for the office suite alone! I like how they mention OpenOffice.org, but I’m a bit concerned that Google Docs isn’t the best solution (its free, not open source).
• Work-life haven: why entrepreneurs and digital nomads are settling in Bali. I love Bali, I had no idea there was a tech scene there too. Might interesting.
• More for productivity: The Origin of the 8 Hour Work Day and Why We Should Rethink It.
• Value is created by doing. Stuff that feels like work, isn’t.
• On The Death of Expertise. 

iTunes is fixed now (11.1.3) but somewhere in-between it broke and deleted all of my podcast downloads as well as the subscriptions. It has been over four months that I’ve gone without listening to podcasts and I can’t say that I miss it hugely. Audiobooks (on phone, in gym particularly), Spotify and Rdio have taken its place. 

This means a lot to me – I always thought that podcasting could be big business. Maybe its just niche business?

Apple engineering needs to QA this stuff. It’s not hard. There should be test harnesses. Heck, just testing the damn upgrade. 

In other news, the up arrow key seems dodgy again on my Macbook Air. It is still only 11 months old and this is the second time its happening. I will have to find time to walk into an Apple Store to get an immediate replacement (something we can’t do in Malaysia/Singapore obviously).

Overall feeling on the Apple experience in these terms: relatively negative. Am I going to give up their stuff? No. There’s a more positive post on Apple coming soon.

The OpenBSD Foundation is raising funds – they’ve got a goal of USD$150,000 (so far they’ve achieved $100,000). A few days ago they had potential trouble keeping the lights on for this secure BSD distribution, and today they’re all set in terms of electricity to power servers and looking for more around project expansion. 

If you dig MariaDB, it’s worth noting that MySQL 5.1.73 ships and the MariaDB branch in the ports tree is currently at MariaDB 10.0.7. Previously they shipped MariaDB 5.5.

Donate to keep the lights on for this secure BSD distribution. Many thanks to Brad Smith for packaging MySQL & MariaDB!

FOSDEM happens this year, February 1&2 2014. This year is a special year as it is the 10th anniversary: great content in the schedule, you must pre-register for dinner (lot’s of wonderful Belgian food & drink), and we have a shared booth in the expo hall.

Read more about the event with a wonderful post by Kenny. Again, much thanks to Liz, dim0, Kenny, Frederic for organising the venue, and the sponsors Oracle/SkySQL/Percona.

SkySQL is well represented: 

1. 13:35-14:05 – MariaDB CONNECT Storage engine – Serge Frezefond
2. 15:35-16:05 – SPIDER Storage Engine – Colin Charles, Stephane Varoqui
3. 18:05-18:35 – OSM data in MySQL – Hartmut Holzgraefe
4. 18:35-19:05 – MaxScale, the Pluggable Router – Massimiliano Pinto, Vilho Raatikka

See you all at the Friday beer event on 31.01.2013!