On January this year, I decided it was time to get a new computer. May be catch a boxing day deal. After choosing a nice quad core with 4 GB of RAM, I realize one 'small' problem with this Dell: it comes with Vista. Any other options for the OS? Nope, it's Vista or Vista.

If, at the time, I had not had previous experience with Vista, I would've been happy to get it. But another box I had bought for the living room came with Vista, so I knew it.

And this is what was in my mind: Vista can make my new Quad core run like an old XT 8088. I won't even notice that I have 4 GB of RAM, Vista will swallow it whole with nothing left for me to run vi. It is big, and it is slow.

Next is the stability. I saw Vista crashing too often. The file explorer at least once a day.

So, as I was looking at the checkout screen of the Dell site, instead of having a nice picture of productivity and speed, I could see only dark Vista …

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So I got a new laptop, a Zepto Znote 6024W.

I got it with 2GB of RAM, a 7200RPM 120GB harddisk, 1440x900 screen, 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo CPU, and Intel Pro/Wireless 4965AGN.

First overall impressions are quite good. The good stuff:

• Everything seems to work out-of-the-box with Ubuntu Hardy.
• You can customize the configuration when you order it, so you don't have to pay (money and power wise) for stuff you do not need. This includes the Operating System, so no Microsoft tax (I would probably have gotten a Thinkpad if I could have found a place to buy it without Windows).
• The machine feels fairly small, and not too heavy.
• The machine feels generally quite fast.
• It has 4 USB ports (my old one had only two).
• The mains adapter is two-legged with the cord on top, so should fit everywhere (for some reason it is quite common to get three-legged …

Phew....People ask what the first week at Google is like... I cannot find one word which can describe it but I'll try throwing together a few adjectives:Exciting. Exhausting. Fun. Delicious.The reason for the first adjective is obvious. The second adjective - simply because its like going back to school with stuff to learn. The third - I met a lot of interesting people and they are all fun to

BazaarX

Originally uploaded by Elliot Murphy

This is a native OS X bazaar GUI! Still in the early stages of development, but making rapid progress towards an alpha release. If you’re rocking bzr on a Mac, go give Martin a hand: https://launchpad.net/bazaarx

In just a few minutes, I will be leaving for Graphing Social Patterns East, a conference by Oreilly. Dave McClure of 500 Hats is the conference chair. I plan to meet old friends and make new ones. It should be a lot of fun. More about Graphing Social Patterns.

Normally, I try to avoid reading business books. I especially avoid those promoting the secret sauce to building great companies. I figure the folks who actually do the building often tend to be too busy working, or otherwise enjoying the fruits of their labors instead of writing books. Plus, there are no shortcuts into building enduring companies, regardless of what we might see occasionally in the tech sector.

A few months ago I found myself at a bookstore and ended up buying a book called Good to Great. It’s actually a decent book, particularly because it is based on actual research.

One of the central elements of the book deals with the task of making sure you have the right team in place (”Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus”). We’ve …

I am going to receive a job offer from Sun Canada 'in the next week or so'. I'll have about a week or two to decide if I am going to accept it. It's not an easy decision when your visa is attached to your job, so I wish I had more time.

I'll be honest - I am not sure what I am going to do. I have to weigh up if losing 2 weeks/year vacation is worth whatever added compensation Sun can provide in exchange. To Sun's credit they've managed to keep way more people than I expected, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

2 1/2 years at MySQL - it's been a good innings.

So, we have all heard that Billy Joel played a concert at Oracle’s OpenWorld in 2007.

What follows is an actual IRC conversation among Don Seiler, Dave Edwards, and myself:

(4:02:46 PM) don: ha @ Billy Joel at OOW
(4:03:38 PM) dave: “We didn’t fire the startup…”
(4:07:53 PM) don: “we didn’t start the backup”?
(4:12:53 PM) dave: “Don’t go changin’ . . . your slave and master”
(4:20:19 PM) ***sheeri shoots Dave
(4:20:49 PM) sheeri: “I don’t want clever replication, we never could have come this far”
(4:24:05 PM) sheeri: “And the server sounds like an aero-plane, and replication chugs along as it must…and the inserts go on, replication corrupts, and I say “Man, now I’m workin’ all night!”

(4:24:29 PM) dave: “I said ‘ls -u’ . . . …

In response to my previous post, Matt Aslett aptly asks: Does open source have a glass ceiling? In a word, yes. But it doesn't have to be this way. The "OSS business model" is a misnomer as there are many variations. But the business model that the majority of large and leading OSS vendors utilize has one common aspect. These vendors are all selling support and "other stuff" (indemnification, additional testing, better management, and so on) around a product that is indistinguishable from what a user can get freely from the related open source project. Giving away all the value... READ MORE

Today High Performance MySQL, Second Edition went to press. I’ve been working with the production team over the last couple of weeks, proofreading and checking the index and working with the artist who re-drew the illustrations.

I spoke to the production editor this morning and she told me the schedule is for the bound-book date to be the 16th of June. The official in-stock date is June 19th. I don’t know how many copies they’re printing for the first printing. But I think there have been a lot of pre-orders (rumors I’ve heard from my Amazon Affiliate account).

I cannot wait to hold my copy in my hands!

Publishing