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EAVB_RNFVYMOPON
Pity PubSubHubBub and rssCloud are such instant pingers.
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I follow some aspects of Getting Things Done (GTD) and one of the most important concepts for me is having a reliable mechanism for collecting new things that need some sort of action, and then filing into appropriate systems to manage and review. I only have two review systems, Trac and Datebk on my Palm phone.
If a task is not added to one of these systems, its unlikely to be reviewed, and likely to be forgotten.
I'm generally ok with getting a tasked filed for digital collections (email/Skype etc.). Palm on a phone has greatly helped in quickly dealing with filing phone related tasks such as text messages and calls. My paper collection mechanism sadly such as mail, has been woeful. It's been one two many times, in which I've missed due dates because it's hidden in a pile of stuff (stack of papers) and not reviewed.
Being sick for most of last week, creating a system and sorting out paper was a good mindless yet productive exercise.
Inbox TrayI organized it into three simple trays:
In the middle tray, pieces of paper often need to be grouped together. I refer to these as current project folders. Invoices with checks and receipts, contracts with amendments and so on. Transparent plastic folders are perfect for this task, as it's very easy to quickly put them in, and also see at glance what's in it (saves time on labeling). I use sticky notes within these folders for additional reference information.
When you're done with them, some like the one shown here, even have binding holes to easily file them into a proper binded folder.
Finally these plastic folders are a lot easier to deal with then binded folders when you need to pull them out and reference it quickly to take some action. You can easily pull them out of the tray, or have some sort of container within easy reach. The most important point here is that what is contained in these plastic folders and trays is not "stuff". Except for the top box, they're already organized in my trusted and often reviewed systems.
The NoSQL/relational database debate has been going on for quite some time. MariaDB, like MySQL is relational. And if you read these series of blog posts, you’ll realise that if you use MySQL correctly, you can achieve quite a lot.
If you’re using the Federated engine, know that MySQL disables FEDERATED by default. In MariaDB 5.1.42, you get FederatedX, which is a maintained fork of FEDERATED, by the author himself! Bugs are fixed, and this is a supported engine, so if you’re using the FEDERATED engine, it might be wise to try out FederatedX.
I’d also like to bring to attention, an interesting essay by Dennis Forbes: Getting Real about NoSQL and the SQL-Isn’t-Scalable Lie. Monty says: “NoSQL is for very smart people who need a very sharp knife. People who are not capable of mastering SQL should not even attempt to try out NoSQL.”
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A few notes about the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010.
So, have you registered yet? Early bird registrations ends March 15 2010.
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Marina Mahathir, daughter of former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir, is crying foul in The Column That Wasn’t. Apparently, she has a Musings column in the local daily, The Star, and her column will be amiss for a week, due to the sensitive nature of the article. A few things to note:
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OK, by far I have tested so many rom for my HTC Dream aka G1. And the latest is OpenEclair ROM. For me Eclair is the best ROM but is not intend to be fit on my G1. After a month using OpenEclair, I give up. Mainly because of these reasons :-
1. Too slow - From the startup boot, to even to recognize the call screen to popup. This is include, the browser, map and gmail.
2. Sucked up my battery into half a day usage. Mind you, I am using 2300mAH battery. The Live Wallpaper is somewhat a resource hunger and will quickly drain your battery.
I want to use CyanogenMod 4.2.x but lately cyanogen busy with his BaconMod. So I searched the XDA Forum, about to try Super D ROM, with some nice feedback from user.
I stumble this polish rom cooker named Laszlo, and he make a wonderful themed rom, that is super fast! One is Donut by Laszlo and Eclair R5. Want to try eclair but I think I need a stable, usable day-to-day phone. I wipe OpenEclair and flash to Donut by Laszlo. So fast, flick from screen to screen is responsive, and most important is stable. Not even a force close since I have flashed it.
Now an update Donut by Laszlo 1.2. Just update it and as usual it is fast. Head to l-rom.googlecode.com/ and download it there.
We planned for a company meeting to be in Iceland, with just about a month’s notice. You can do that, when you’re a fairly small company. Having been back from London during the winter, where it was snowing in the New Year, I was not exactly jumping high to visit Iceland. Ice? Gasp.
It was not exactly easy to get to Iceland: KUL – SIN – FRA – CPH – KEF. Five countries, in a little over a day (would have been about it, had it not been due to a delayed flight from Copenhagen — seemed that the plane was snowed in from Iceland). Upon getting my boarding pass for the last leg, I was asked by the SAS ticketing agent if I’d like a window seat – I naturally replied aisle, and he confirmed my choice with me, as if shocked. Then I realised, there might be some interesting sights from the plane, so I took his advice and got a window seat. Icelandair is nice! (in comparison to Lufthansa). Odd plane though – they run Windows (noticed from the mouse pointer), but the entire entertainment system is touchscreen based. Their magazine made a special mention that their playing cards were mentioned in Monocle’s Travel Top Fifty 2009/2010; they were for sale for 3 euros. I figured I’ll pick it up on the way back. Anyway, the view from the window seat? Completely amazing.
I arrived for the meeting on Friday, so missed a bit of the first day. It was pretty much in time for dinner, when I arrived at the Radisson SAS 1919 (important detail – there are 2 Radisson hotels here), so we headed to a restaurant called the Viking Village. Here we tried shark, had some nice lamb, and tried skyr, which they seemingly adulterated with something rather sweet along the way!
The next day, we had dinner at Orange. Before we stumbled upon it, we somehow found that on the 2nd floor, there was also the Malaysian Embassy. Very interesting :) Orange was beautiful, and Monty got us a tasting platter – something like a 5 course dinner, matched with appropriate wines, for each course! We ate like kings. It started with langoustines, then we had whale (which I think tastes a little like beef, maybe a little rare beef?). After that we had beef, and we got some pre-dessert strawberry foam, followed finally by our dessert (another variation of skyr). Being Friday, we all headed out for some drinks, so it was a night infused with lots of salmiakki, whiskey, and beer (this after the wines we had!).
Dinner on Sunday was at Hereford Steakhouse. For me, it started with a Cognac-infused langoustine soup, and for my main, I decided that I’d go for a steak and lobster tail. Skipped dessert, as I was pretty damn tired from the night before.
Monday was an excursion day. We tried our hand at horse riding. These Icelandic horses are apparently quite pony-sized, due to living in extreme conditions, thus eating less. We rode for about two hours, and it was the first time for me (and many of us). Let’s say I now have new respect for horse riders, and those folk at the races. You’d think it was cold; but the coldest part was stopping, giving the horses a break, and allowing the few to have a smoke break. I failed at getting my horse tied once we reached the stables – maybe I just had a stubborn horse (it was apparently a willing horse, not one for beginners). Consequently, I hurt a finger on my left hand, making it rather difficult to type!
The Blue Lagoon. Another photo, showing the steam.
For me, our visit to The Blue Lagoon was the highlight of the trip. I absolutely loved it. This alone, is worth visiting Iceland for. We were told that we’d be bored within an hour. Rubbish. We spent a good three to four hours there. They have a steam room, a sauna (which was a bit too cool for my liking), and of course, the geothermal spa. If more time permitted, I would have probably gone for a massage; apparently you can get one done while in the water. They clay-like mud, is quite relaxing when applied to skin. Your head is above water, but your body is submerged in the warm water. So when the cold winds do come, you still feel quite nice. Lifting your body up a little out of the water is also fun – kind of like “hot/cold treatments”. The experience is truly indescribable – you must experience it for yourself. Before going in, we decided to also grab lunch here – a day of lamb. Well presented, and very tasty, especially with the accompanying wine. Beware the bus journey: it took us over an hour to reach Reykjavik!
Monday’s dinner was at a restaurant close-by to the hotel. It was at Laekjarbrekka, situated a little on top of a hill. This place screamed romantic diners and fancy dining. They had good value for money sets, so I grabbed the langoustine set. It started off with a most amazing langoustine soup, flavoured with cream and Cognac, and we moved quite quickly to the main course (pictured), which consisted of langoustines, a langoustine tempura, and a baked/puff pastry item filled with langoustine. Paired with some rose wine, and a few shots of vodka before (I’m told that if you feel a cold coming, you should have some vodka – keeps the gremlins at bay), this was a most excellent meal. Dessert was home-made ice-cream, and again the presentation was fabulous. Truly a restaurant to take your romantic date to.
Anyway, the entire set of photos is on Flickr: Reykjavik, Iceland.
A few other notes:
All in all, it was great fun meeting everyone (a lot of old colleagues from MySQL now work at Monty Program), I think the meeting was rather productive (I’ll write about that in another post), and the time outside of the meeting was simply fabulous. Good choice for a meeting Monty!
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This is a talk on how to build a site from ground up using Django. This will cover Django's basic, and covers some of the useful feature. If you are planning to attend the talk, it will be nice to have a working Django installation, or at least bring a notebook which can run Django.
http://www.slideshare.net/sweemenghacker/a-hands-on-guide-to-django
http://bitbucket.org/sweemeng/barcamp-malacca/
This event is only open to HackerSpace KL Members. To know more about HackerSpace KL, please visit this site: http://www.hackerspace.my/about-us , To be a member of HackerSpace KL , file a pledge here : http://www.hackerspace.my/about-us/hackerspacekl-pledge-page
This was an unplanned journal entry. I wasn't planning on an upgrade and update to my home server which runs on FreeBSD. Bad things seem to happen all at once, and soon after I got a nasty throat infection, my home server motherboard died. During installation of the motherboard one of the mirrored disks of the main file storage device failed. Time to make lemonade I guess.
A few lessons here:
The two failures, conspired to forcing this upgraded setup earlier than anticipated. FreeBSD 7.1 had problems booting up on the MSI KA70VM as a PATA drive, forcing me to do a FreeBSD 8.0 binary upgrade from CD (totally trouble free I might add). Current best bang for the buck drives are 1TB and it's painful with UFS2. With ZFS production ready on 8.0, it's time for a modern storage layout.
ZFS Man (YouTube) is a funny and informative introduction to ZFS on FreeBSD.
These resources will get you going:
Some more tips here:
RAID-Z or Mirror?Constantin Gonzalez has written an informative blog on this.
Your options are more space for cheaper (more space/drive) in a more inflexible setup (RAID-Z) or less space, with a more flexible and faster performance mirror setup. With 6 SATA ports, and the Antec P182 case having a 4 + 2 drive cage case, it makes more sense on commodity hardware to have a mirror setup where data loss is more of a factor than space.
Here is my list on why mirror makes more sense for commodity hardware:
Since commodity drives are likely to fail anyways, I grabbed a pair of the cheapest 1TB drives available which currently are the Samsung Spinpoint F1. Performance surprisingly was not bad for these drives.
Setting it upThis part blew me away.. ZFS rocks.
I find out that my two new drives are ad0 and ad1, with atacontrol list:
ATA channel 0: Master: ad0 <SAMSUNG HD103UJ/1AA01118> SATA revision 2.x Slave: ad1 <SAMSUNG HD103UJ/1AA01118> SATA revision 2.x ATA channel 1: Master: ad2 <ST380023A/3.33> ATA/ATAPI revision 6 Slave: ad3 <Maxtor 6L250R0/BAH41G10> ATA/ATAPI revision 7 ATA channel 2: Master: no device present Slave: no device present ATA channel 3: Master: no device present Slave: no device present ATA channel 4: Master: no device present Slave: no device present ATA channel 5: Master: acd0 <PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-212/1.21> SATA revision 1.x Slave: no device presentSo let's create our mirror pool:
zpool create data mirror ad0 ad1That's it, data is the pool name I used and it's automatically mounted at /data (no need to mess around with fstab and such).
Let's find out our new pool status:
[kaeru@xavier ~]$ zpool status pool: data state: ONLINE scrub: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM data ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 ad0 ONLINE 0 0 0 ad1 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errorsAnd where it's mounted and how much space is available:
[kaeru@xavier ~]$ zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT data 105G 808G 27K /data ...I've snipped some data here on some other mountpoints, hence some space is used already. This is immediately usable like any other filesytem.
Here is where some clarification is needed. The pool can act both as a device and filesystem. So by default data is the name of the pool and also the filesystem.
You can already copy files and such this /data filesystem, however everything in it will be treated as if its a single partition, so you can't do fancy stuff like set quotas, additional copies, compression and so on for subdirectories.
In order to do that, you need to create additional filesystems using the data pool:
zfs create data/jails zfs set mountpoint=/jails data/jailsThis is going to create a jails filesystem in the data pool, and automatically mount it as /jails. The mount command will show how this works:
mount ... data/jails on /jails (zfs, local) data on /data (zfs, NFS exported, local) ...ls /data/jails is going to say no such file or directory, because there is no directory there. You could mkdir /data/jails if you wish but that's a directory but not the filesystem.
By default, without the mountpoint option, data/jails would have been automatically mounted as /data/jails. In the above example the difference between a filesystem and normal directory is clear. This difference is important when you export filesystems and wonder why /data is empty.
Automatic exporting of NFS/SMB sharesExporting filesystems can now be done automatically using zfs commands:
zfs set sharenfs=on data/This will export any "children" datasets (or filesystems) automatically like data/jails:
[kaeru@xavier ~]$ showmount -e Exports list on localhost: /data/videos/family Everyone /data/videos Everyone /data/photos Everyone /data/music Everyone /data EveryoneYou can set better security options of course. Back to the filesystems vs directory. If you NFS mount /data on a remote PC, you won't see /data/music or /data/photos. This is because they're not mounted in the /data filesystem(as a directory). If you want them available as /data/music on the client you'll have to mount them again, maybe as an nullfs mount on the server or as additional mounts on the client. Hierarchy here applies to datasets, not subdirectories, which work as normal POSIX filesystem. This should not be an issue in future with NFSv4 namespace support.
You can use old way of configuring /etc/exports if you want, but I like this way better, it makes sense.
QuotasSimilarly, no need to mess around with quotas anymore in fstab. One of the reasons for having jails dirs on MD disks, is a hard filesystem quota. With ZFS pools this is now no longer an issue:
xavier# zfs set quota=100GB data/jails xavier# zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT data 97.1G 816G 27K /data data/jails 1.80G 98.2G 19K /jails data/jails/kaeru.my 1.80G 98.2G 1.80G /jails/kaeru.my data/music 55.6G 816G 55.6G /data/music data/photos 21.4G 816G 21.4G /data/photos data/videos 18.3G 816G 19K /data/videos data/videos/family 18.3G 816G 18.3G /data/videos/familydata/jails filesystem is now limited to 100GB, and now we want to limit kaeru.my jail to 20GB:
xavier# zfs quota=20GB data/jails/kaeru.my xavier# zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT data 98.8G 815G 27K /data data/jails 1.80G 98.2G 19K /jails data/jails/kaeru.my 1.80G 18.2G 1.80G /jails/kaeru.mykaeru.my jail is now limited to 20GB, whereas before it inherited jails limit of 100GB. Neat huh? Oh it's no longer UFS2 or and file backed MD disk.. no more long bgfsck's on unexpected reboots, no more double overhead of an MD file backed disk for performance.
There is a long list of other ZFS features, of which snapshots and the ability to send snapshots over pipes and ssh look the most interesting.
Some tuning neededZFS by default tends to eat up a lot of memory, and this can result in poor performance. After reboot, r/w performance was reduced to around 5-10MB/s after several minutes of use. I had to reduce the ZFS adaptive replacement cache (ARC) usage, to 512MB on my 4GB server.
In /boot/loader.conf:
vfs.zfs.arc_max="512M"After this change, performance was closer to the limit of the drives and stayed there.
FreeBSD 8.0 ErrataFreeBSD 8 has a ton of new features, which will take a long time to explore. The good thing is that the performance features are immediately available such as the new scheduler. Here are some of the errata:
Its times like this, I want to hear from the greater community – the ones that are reading say, Planet MySQL or Planet MariaDB.
MySQL to me, and many others is an ecosystem. We’ve had for the longest time, complementary technology talks, like for memcached (which have been popular, filled rooms). NoSQL is becoming quite popular, and there are complementary technologies sitting around. To get an idea, if terms like the following turn you on: Hadoop, Redis, Pig, NDB (yes, MySQL Cluster is largely NoSQL before NoSQL became popular), Tokyo Tyrant, StormCloud (formerly Waffle Grid).
Now, do you want to see these kinds of talks at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010?
Check out the schedule grid. Its pretty healthy already ;)
Also, how interested are you in talks about PostgreSQL and MySQL in similar environments? What about replicating between PostgreSQL and Drizzle?
So a simple yes/no, would help. I should get this into a poll, clearly… maybe next time.
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AGENDA:
12.30pm Welcome Lunch
2.00pm Registration
2.15pm Welcome Address and Introduction
- Nigel Lee Siew Tat, CEO of TechnoDex
- Justin, Sales Director of ECS
2.30pm Implementing
Your Open Source Business Strategy
- Su Shin
Cheow, CTO of TechnoDex
3.00pm Tailoring an Open Source
Solutions for Your Business
- Bruno, Red Hat
3.30pm Coffee Break & Refreshment
4.00pm
Unleash the Value of Open Source Business Intelligence
- Royce Bunag, Jaspersoft
4.30pm Case Study: Dun
and Bradstreet Singapore
- D&B
4.40pm Panel Discussion
4.50pm Lucky Draw
5.00pm Closing
This event is FREE for all attendees.
Pre-registration is required as seats are limited.
10 EARLY birds will be entitled for MYSTERY GIFTS!!!
Please RSVP by 1 March 2010 to
Adeline @ +603 6286 8222/ Helen @+603 8070 3155
Email: adelinelee@ecsm.com.my / helen.lim@technodex.com
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