dalts.net Kind Acts of Randomness

Ok - I've fallen off the Wagon on blogging again... been busy with work, and also been doing a lot of Gold Coast stuff. Sorry - I will try harder.

One of the things I have been involved with is Bar Camp Gold Coast - which is on TOMORROW! It's not to late to signup if you are still interested. We have lots of stuff happening, some giveaways and actually have some decent Internet for once! 38 people and counting signed up so far - if it's anything like Brisbane I'm sure we'll get quite a few extras. We ordered Pizza for 50 - so hope it's not too much more!

author: Baron Schwartz Peter Zaitsev Vadim Tkachenko Jeremy Zawodny Arjen Lentz Derek Balling rating: asin: 0596101716 binding: Paperback list price: $49.99 USD amazon price: $31.49 USD

High Performance MySQL is the definitive guide to building fast, reliable systems with MySQL. Written by noted experts with years of real-world experience building very large systems, this book covers every aspect of MySQL performance in detail, and focuses on robustness, security, and data integrity. High Performance MySQL teaches you advanced techniques in depth so you can bring out MySQL's full power. Learn how to design schemas, indexes, queries and advanced MySQL features for maximum performance, and get detailed guidance for tuning your MySQL server, operating system, and hardware to their fullest potential. You'll also learn practical, safe, high-performance ways to scale your applications with replication, load balancing, high availability, and failover. This second edition is completely revised and greatly expanded, with deeper coverage in all areas. Major additions include: Emphasis throughout on both performance and reliability Thorough coverage of storage engines, including in-depth tuning and optimizations for the InnoDB storage engine Effects of new features in MySQL 5.0 and 5.1, including stored procedures, partitioned databases, triggers, and views A detailed discussion on how to build very large, highly scalable systems with MySQL New options for backups and replication Optimization of advanced querying features, such as full-text searches Four new appendices The book also includes chapters on benchmarking, profiling, backups, security, and tools and techniques to help you measure, monitor, and manage your MySQL installations.

I've been in Brisbane the last couple of days doing a Certified Scrummaster course. The course was run by Jens Østergaard in association with the Scrum Alliance.

Arrived on Wednesday morning and was surprised to find we had 2 trainers - Jens had bought along his colleague Arne Åhlander to co-train. I really like having 2 trainers. Not only does it give the trainers a little bit of a rest so they are always "fresh", but we get twice the perspective on things, twice as many people to ask questions of and it's just nice to hear a different voice sometimes.

The course was extremely practical - lots of exercises and examples, and there were great people on the course. I was surprised to find I was not the only Gold Coast person - GCCC had 4 or 5 people that they sent along (what a refreshing thought to think our governments are thinking about Agile/Scrum - maybe we'll finally get value for our taxes). As usual, no matter how hard I tried, I ended up asking way too many questions and commenting.... I just couldn't help myself. My apologies to any of my fellow attendees who I might have annoyed, that's just me being me - I don't think I can change this... and maybe I shouldn't.

At the end of the course I told Jens a little bit about OSDC, Linux Australia, Barcamps and all the other things I have been involved in - he was really interested - and I think there would be a lot of Agilists in the open source community that would benefit from engaging more with the Scrum community. Jens is happy to talk or find someone from Scrum Alliance to talk at our various events - so if anyone from OSDC/LCA/Barcamps is reading this, please get in touch with him - he is a great contact.

I took part in a protest in front of the council chambers on the Gold Coast today. We were protesting about the fact that a few weeks ago the GCCC banned peaceful protests on council land that did not have the permission of the Gold Coast CEO. The legislation was introduced by the (unelected) CEO in response to some complaints about rescued battery hens at a Vegan Society protest. The protest was a great success and the new rules were effectively overturned today in council, but one of the things that I found interesting were Cnr Dawn Critchlow's remarks to us outside the chambers.

(I'm the one on the right)

She started by saying she supported our protest, but when asked why she had voted for the new regulations (the vote was unanimous) she said there had been a lot of things on the agenda for that day (the new regs were bundled in with all sorts of other non related things) and that she hadn't read it and there had been no discussion in council about this particular part. Hang on a minute, how the hell can they vote for something when they haven't read it? I shudder to think what other laws are being passed in out governments by politicians that haven't had time to read things, if they haven't read something they should at least abstain.

Fair play to Dawn though, she fessed up, admitted it and apologized. She has to be one of the few honest politicians I've come across. Mayor Ron Clarke on the other hand rushed out to talk to us after Dawn (maybe someone had dobbed her in) and got himself into all sorts of trouble back-peddling and contradicting himself - he did look rather foolish and I think the Local nine news captured a bit of this. I recorded the segment and will upload to youtube when I get a moment.

While I was standing there - I noticed the old council chambers are still vacant - maybe this will be the site for the Gold Coast Ministry of Truth?

I've seen this problem so many times I just have to quickly blog it.

If you make a copy of a Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) vmware guest and you can't get any network (your eth0 suddenly becomes eth1 or eth2) - make sure you remove the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and then reboot. This will fix your problem, in previous Ubuntus it was the /etc/iftab file (which is a well documented fix) but it's all different in Hardy.

Well Barcamp Brisbane #2 was a resounding success. We counted 60 people at the peak - and I managed to find a few new Gold Coast people which is always good. I didn't do any unorganising of this one really but ended up doing lots of wrangling on the day, although it was more like herding cats at times.

My presentation on wxRuby was ok - although I think a little too technical judging by the lack of questions.

I did prepare it all at 4am this morning, but I told a bit of a fib in the presentation. I actually know NOTHING about wxRuby, wxWidgets (come on - I am a web developer!) and not a lot of ruby - I just wanted to do it as a bit of an experiment to see if I could get away with it without anyone realising. Sorry for the deception, but it was fun, and gave me some presentation practice. The content of the presentation and demo was correct though - so if you want to use wxRuby - go ahead, it is very cool.

Next challenge - Bar Camp Gold Coast. Pencil in 5th July in your calenders if you are nearby - I promise to do a presentation on something I'm good at this time.

ps. I also succumbed to pressure and joined twitter. http://twitter.com/spidie

Off to Barcamp Brisbane today. I "unorganised" the last one, but I'm just an attendee this time (although I probably won't be able to help myself bossing people around). Jaron woke at 4am briefly and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I ended up preparing something to present (shock horror). I'm not a great public speaker - so this is quite unusual for me, so please go easy on me if you are there.

If you're reading this early and still want to come along, all the details are at http://barcamp.org/BarCampBrisbane. It's at the East Brisbane Bowls club and this year - WE HAVE INTERNET, so a few of us will probably be twittering and all that stuff. I'm taking the camera so I'll post pictures, I am also taking a few boxes of my assorted computer junk to giveaway, swap or sell - so if you have stuff like this gathering dust in your place please bring it along.

For those trying to install Hardy on the new Dell 530S (or similar Dells), I'll save you a lot of hassle - this is the thread to read:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/153702

I wasted a lot of time trying all sorts of things to disable the sata drivers to get around all the "revalidaton failed" errors etc, but in the end found this thread (much lower down the search results). Dell ship with the SATA controller in IDE mode in the BIOS for easy windows installs without SATA drivers, Ubuntu of course comes with all the drivers and works perfectly in SATA mode.

Once the SATA issue was resolved this also fixed my problem with my ATI Radeon HD2400 graphics card - some sort of IRQ conflict.

Ok - I've been reading about all these hackers running OSX on non apple hardware, and seeing as I just got delivery of a new uber-specced el-cheapo Dell 530S from the Dell Outlet and my 2 year old son went to sleep on time tonight, I thought I would try something different. Before doing my usual Ubuntu install (it gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction not even booting the vista virus) - I threw in the Kalyway OSX disk (obtained from dubious sources I know - but I do own OSX licences).

It all seemed to install ok - I got stuck in the keyboard loop problem that a lot of people get - but that was fixed by booting in single user mode and skipping the intro. If you have to do this don't forget to change the root password while you are in there - or you wont be able to login.

I had to throw in a different network card - but luckily I had an old Realtek clone card in the cupboard that worked straight off. Wasn't expecting to do any hardware hacking tonight but I did have to chop off half of the back plate to get it to fit in the slimline case so won't be a permanent fixture (damn those slimlines - I didn't notice the "S" on the model number when I ordered it).

My stumbling block was graphics - I have a ATI Radeon 2400 XT and despite following all the howtos - I am still a bit stuck with this one. I am either stuck in 1024x768 or I get the lovely block pattern and have to go back into single user and undo.

I'm going to give it one last chance tomorrow with the Leo4All build (someone with my card reported sucess with this)- then I'll give up and put what I originally indended on it. While it's fun - I don't think it's really worth all the hassle, especially since who knows what Apple will do in future updates to break people's installs. It's funny - Linux used to be like this 10 years ago - but oh look how it's changed... I've put Ubuntu on a lot of dells recently and it's generally a breeze.