Colin Charles Agenda

Use MySQL? Fancy meeting other database geeks? In Melbourne? Free on Wednesday evening? Then come to the MySQL Meetup on Wednesday, October 17, from 7:00PM onwards. Its at Building 10, Level 8, Room 4, at RMIT University, so there’s easy access for all.

The agenda this month is simple:

• Using MySQL and JDBC, presented by Minh Van Nguyen
• A quiz of what not to do in MySQL, presented by Arjen Lentz (guest, from Brisbane)

There’s a trip to the pub later that night. There might even be dinner before-hand. If you have suggestions, make sure its vegan-friendly (hi Stewart!).

Technorati Tags: mysql, meetup

So others know how I check out a fresh tree, here are instructions to building MySQL from mysql.bkbits.net, using the free bkf tool.

• in ~/code, do bkf clone bk://mysql.bkbits.net/mysql-5.0-community mysql-5.0-community to clone to community tree down to your disk
• wait patiently, while bitkeeper attempts to suck some of your bandwidth
• now, do BUILD/compile-dist, and wait while MySQL builds
• you might find it handy to now get the test suite on your build, via make test
• run make dist, and you’ll have nice dandy source tarballs to go with your build for easy installation/distribution/etc.
• if you encounter problems, say with ndb (and you’re not testing against it), you can run make dist --ignore ndb for instance

If for some reason you don’t want the latest development tree, and say, are more interested in a tag, all you need to do is find the appropriate tree under the Repository section on bkbits, click on it, head over to tags, find an appropriate tag, and execute a bkf clone -rTAG bk://mysql.bkbits.net/mysql-5.0-community mysql-5.0-community-TAG. You now have a mysql version that matches a certain tag. Build as per above.

To keep up-to-date, just run bkf pull.

If you actually need to install supporting packages (or bkf itself!), etc. on say Ubuntu or Fedora, read Installing from the Development Source Tree, part of the excellent MySQL manual. Also, executing bkf --help is pretty easy. The tool itself is pretty brain-dead, quite unlike its older (commercial) brother, BitKeeper (bk).

Update: I should clarify that make dist alone, only gives you a pristine source tarball for distribution, etc. What I normally do is hook it into the package management system of the platform of my choice (usually RPM or DEB), and build binaries that way. However, if you want a binary tarball, there’s an additional step in that you need to run scripts/make_binary_distribution (generally, after running tests!). This will be a tarball that contains a binary for distribution. Heads up to Giuseppe for dropping me a line.

Technorati Tags: mysql, bkf, bkbits, tarballs, source

I must be moving to another shard, having outgrown my current one. Its a manual operation.

Flickr tells me they’re moving my stuff around

Incidentally, I can’t sign out. Or view the main page. Or any of the groups I’m subscribed to. Its completely locked. But it does take under-15 minutes… (at least for the load I have – ~11,500 images).

Update: Read John Allspaw‘s comments at the HighScalability link to this blog post. He’s in-charge of operations, and an all round nice guy, and great presenter.

Technorati Tags: flickr, shard, moving

I’m reminded of an old painting, where there’s a meeting of minds. Since Heidelberg was largely informal (very few stand-up presentations with the audience sitting) with discussions, equally useful conversation and work were done over dinner, in hotel lobbies, and in-between sessions.

Meeting of the Minds: Kaj and Jeremy (large)

I particularly like this photo, as there’s lots of community contributors in the photo. Clockwise from Jeremy, we have Paul (Mr. PBXT, and now MyBS), Pascal (Mr. Yahoo!) and David (co-Founder).

I’m now uploading photos of birds, from our visit to Burg Guttenberg. The heidelberg tag is definitely growing.

Technorati Tags: mysql, heidelberg, devmeeting, developer meeting, dinner, photo

Taking photos is easy. Processing them is hard. By processing I mean, going through them, ditching ones that didn’t quite make the cut, and then uploading them. Note processing does not even mean editing them in The Gimp.

View from the Miraikan, looking towards Daiba, at the UC-J reception
(view the other 31 photos from that night)

The reception was amazing, heaps of people won gifts, and kudos again to the organisers. Drinking black vodka, aka Salmiakki that Monty brought, was definitely a treat for those who rocked up to the reception.

Dinner at Kyotatsu (best viewed large)

We went to Kyotatsu twice. Once with the extended MySQL Japanese Community. And once with just mostly MySQLers. We were introduced to crab bowels, something I really like (and might be Kaj’s new favourite dish too) – if only I find it easily in Melbourne. Note that the community dinner was amazing – I think spread amongst three folk, there were no less than ten MySQL books written in Japanese by them. The collective intelligence on that table, was just astounding. Hacking while there, was not a big deal for Tomita-san, famous for the MySQL/Ruby connector.

Pouring sake (view it large)

A truly different experience, as you pour more than required in the glass, and then drink from the square bottomed bit, like a coaster.

I’m pretty much done with my Japanese photo-set, so look at the MySQL Users Conference Japan (UC-J) 2007 set. To see what you missed. To be there next year. To be at a similar event, in Santa Clara, notably the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008.

Technorati Tags: mysql, tokyo, japan, uc-j, uc-j2007, photos, miraikan, sake, community

As I sit in the lobby, taking a break, waiting to leave to the airport for my next destination, I just think about what a great week I’ve had. Its been packed, with just far too much to do. Mornings starting at 4.30am and nights ending at 3am just seem so normal. I’ve taken a ridiculous number of photos, which I hope will make their way online slowly, but expect to see them even in the following month.

At the team exhibitions…

One of the great things about the Heidelberg DevMeeting was being able to interact with my team a lot. Being in a distributed environment, I must say this is the most face-to-face time we’ve had just to hang out, talk, eat, get stuff done, drink, walk around, socialise, etc. Its highly amazing. Really. Don’t even think about doing so at the Users Conference in Santa Clara – everyone’s too busy, and the mandate is to interact with as many non-MySQLers as possible.

So today, as I said goodbye to everyone in my team (and the few stragglers all around the Old City of Heidelberg), I actually felt sad. Knowing that the next time we will all see each other will be months away.

Stand up, reduce meeting times!

At least I’m all pumped up to go back and Get Stuff Done (I wonder if that’s trademarked?)

Zack says it best:

But man cannot live by email, Skype, and IRC alone. So every now and then we get groups together for meetings.

This was really our first team gathering, in (and for) a long time. And interacting with the other teams. Just amazing. Kudos to the organisers. The program was just amazing. And yes, human and team interaction is really important.

Technorati Tags: mysql, heidelberg, devmeeting, developer meeting