I registered for today's "What's new in MySQL 5.1 - Partitioning, Row-based Replication and more" live webinar which is a hot and very interesting topic. Well in fact, it was quite a short experience.

I wasn't aware that I get the sound through telephone (although it was mentioned in the confirmation email, which I didn't read so carefully - my fault) and that I need a fixed telephone line to get the corresponding sound for the webinar. So I followed the instructions, but I called the number on my mobile phone first. I heard from a tape voice that these kind of numbers (toll free 0800s) are not available via my mobile phone supplier, so I tried it on the fixed telephone line and it worked well. But there was another minor problem that made it impossible for me to watch and listen to the webinar simultanously - my fixed telephone is too far away from my PC.

However, that's not such a big deal as the whole webinar will be …

The PHP Vikinger is a community-driven PHP event that will be held in Skien, Norway on June 24th an 25th. Like the famous Foo Camp and Bar Camp, PHP Vikinger is driven by its attendees. The people who come choose and present the sessions at the event.

Attendance is by a mix of invitation and registration. 50 …

The PHP Vikinger is a community-driven PHP event that will be held in Skien, Norway on June 24th an 25th. Like the famous Foo Camp and Bar Camp, PHP Vikinger is driven by its attendees. The people who come choose and present the sessions at the event.

Attendance is by a mix of invitation and registration. 50 invitations have been sent to various PEAR and PHP contributors and 50 spots are open for people who register. Additionally, the invitees have been asked to nominate another 50 people who should be invited to the event.

The event is …

Rusty talks about the “fun” of floating point and how this all ties into Wesnoth.

Platform consistency is certainly a good thing - so I’m guessing the attack_prediction code isn’t run by each node in a network game in a way where machines could disagree on the outcome.

This does however bring up an interesting thing. What if, in the future, it was going to be on a per-node basis and people wanted it to be consistent. How do you warn that this isn’t the case (to somebody who is really just reading the docs on this function)?

Is it easy (or is there even a good way) to separate code that’s on one machine versus every one? In NDB we have some protocols where some things are done on a master and others on the slaves (and sometimes, when we go back to refactor the code, we move …

A picture I just found on my phone of my laptop on the table at lunch in Sorrento at the MySQL DevCon.

I find it humorous that my laptop isn’t an apple (first non-apple laptop I’ve owned) but is much healthier and is even trying to impress the teacher.

Working through the MySQL mailing lists and forums tonight for questions/answers/problems related to backing up/restoring a MySQL database. Just one avenue for making sure the UC presentation on backups get at the heart of what people are experiencing with MySQL backups.

Back to the matter at hand. I stumbled into a post recommending a backup tool that I hadn't used before, automysqlbackup. The release notes indicate it's been around since 2002, the most recent release coming in Jan 2006. I know I've seen this before but never looked closely at it.

It's an easily configurable Unix shell script that (among other things):

• is well documented with header and inline comments (along with info on how to restore from backups)
• wraps around …

Beat Vontobel blogs about “fuþark: The silence of futhark and the state of the dolphin” which is basically about how he’s found that the 5.0.20 release of MySQL is when the 5.0 release is really starting to shine.

This confirms my theory (that I’ve had for quite a while now… like years) that a software release is never really mature until it hits about .20 (that’s dot twenty, not dot two).

When something reaches .10 (dot ten) it’s no longer going to be annoying for most uses, but .20 means that you’re going to be happy. Don’t ask me really why this is the case, but it is.

Think about the 2.6 kernel (yes, Linux Kernel - honestly, you think i was talking about something else?). At about …

The PHP Vikinger is a community-driven PHP event that will be held in Skien, Norway from June 24th to 25th. Like the famous Foo Camp and Bar Camp, PHP Vikinger is driven by its attendees. The people who come choose and present the sessions at the event.

Attendance is by a mix of invitation and registration. 50 invitations have been sent to various PEAR and PHP contributors and 50 spots are open for people who register. Additionally, the invitees have been asked to nominate another 50 people who should be invited to the event.

The event is meant to be as affordable as possible; registration is only 20 Euros, and simple food and a place to sleep are …

I just sent out the invitations for the PHP Vikinger event. My method for choosing who to invite was pretty simple - I chose people listed in the the PHP and PEAR credits who I had written personal email to in the last few years.

Nepotistic? “Nay”, say I, “Nepotastic!” I know that the people I invited are cool, which will mean a good event for people who register. Also, as we have registrations, it won’t be too elitist or exclusive.

If you are curious, read on for the entire invitation (minus the list of attendees.)

NOTE: If you didn’t get an invitation email, then hold tight - you will still be able to register in a week or so.

Aloha $person,

This is an invitation to the PHP Vikinger - read on for details.

WHAT IS IT?
“”"”"”"”"”"
The PHP Vikinger is a community-driven PHP event that will be …

Yes, I know, my blog on MySQL was silent for a long time. This doesn't mean I wasn't dealing with MySQL 5. In fact I was more than ever. It was just not the fun part that usually makes for good blog posts. It rather meant dealing with MySQL's bugs and keeping our servers alive despite them, the slaves more or less in sync, finding workarounds and trying to keep all the resulting late projects at least somewhere near the schedule.

With all that, there was just no time for private experiments and articles on them. And yes, to be honest, I was frustrated sometimes. (Thanks to Giuseppe Maxia for cheering me up recently, I think I was so busy I didn't even respond. Sorry!)

MySQL 5 running perfectly well...

Now, don't get me wrong, there will be many installations where MySQL 5.0 will do its job perfectly. When I finally found the time last weekend to update the …