Dave Lachapelle

Continuing on my latest theme of blog upgrades – I just got a new server set up for myself over here at the new MRX datacenter, and got my blog transitioned over to it. If you’re reading this post, then likely you’ve gotten the new DNS. If you hit my blog from twitter and get a 404, well, you don’t have the new DNS yet, and you likely won’t be reading this yet.

I’ve taken the liberty of setting up Varnish in front of Apache, I know my blog doesn’t get much traffic, but at least it should respond a lot quicker – sometimes I find wordpress to be kinda slow. I’m going to be tweaking the config, and once I have it just right, I’ll post my VCL code here for anyone who’s interested in optimizing Varnish for WordPress installs.  It also has the added benefit of protecting my blog should (hell freeze over and) one of my posts suddenly become popular.

So, big news of the week, Oracle just bought Sun Microsystems for some ridiculous amount of money ($7.4 billion in cash).  Aside from the obvious moanings of how I wish I had $7.4 billion in cash just sitting around so I can buy up companies like playing monopoly, this deal has me (and likely a number of other people) wondering about the future of MySQL now that its going to be owned by Oracle.

I’ve been reading up on the topic a lot, and it seems as though no one’s really talking about whats going to happen with Sun’s newest acquisition.  I can’t say I’m not just a little concerned, since all of our work here at MRX is powered by MySQL databases.  Thats not to say I’m afriad of Oracle, just its both expensive (as in not free) and complex.  I’d argue, so complex that not many people out there who know Oracle are looking for work.

One interesting point I did find when reading up on the topic that I didn’t really know, is that Oracle does own a number of other database systems including TimesTen, Berkeley DB open source, as well as InnoDB.  However, none of these directly competes with Oracle, whereas MySQL does.  So, the question is, do they monitize MySQL to a lesser degree than Oracle (while maintaining some form of stripped down free version), do they drop MySQL alltogether and provide some form of migration path to Oracle 11g, or do they simply let both co-exist and continue monitizing Oracle.

If I had to guess, I’d say they will likely monitize MySQL to a lesser degree than Oracle, probably in the form of support contracts mostly, and still continue to provide a free open source version of MySQL.  Obviously they would charge for any new features they decide to add to MySQL along the way.  Probably very similar to Redhat Enterprise’s business model – seems to be successful for them.

So, I just upgraded to Ubuntu Jaunty on two of my VMs here at the office.  I know its not set to come out in a final release for a few days, however, we’re in the process of migrating to a fully virtualized system, and unfortunately Intrepid has some issues with iSCSI connections.  Namely if you try and shut down the machine, it’ll hang because it tries to disconnect the drive before its unmounted and then just throws errors.

Anyway, as per usual, the upgrades went more or less flawlessly – minus a few symbolic links that needed to be re-created.  Since I don’t have GUIs on these machines (waste of resources on servers if you ask me), a quick:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
sudo do-release-upgrade -d

And about half an hour later and I was all upgraded.  No more iSCSI disconnection problems, and one new feature I’ve found that actually changed my whole workflow when it comes to servers.  That being the inclusion of screen-profiles, a sort of profile manager for screen allowing you to create default screens that open when you log in, as well as status bars, clocks and notifiers.  If you haven’t heard of it, I’d highly recommend you check it out.

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope – Alpha 3 | Ubuntu.

Okay, so I’ve seen a number of ads promoting both Vista and Low-cost PCs coming out of Redmond recently.  Not that I watch much TV, so either they’re just being targeted to the TV I do watch, or they’re on all the time, all over the place. Now that said, I am a Apple fanboy, I’ll admit it, I love most Apple products, that said though, I am willing to criticize them where I believe they’ve missed the boat (ahhmm, AppleTV and Codecs).

In any case, there are two types of ads I’ve seen, one that features children using Vista to do fun stuff with photos.  Okay, they’re cute, and Vista works for children, I get it.  Thing they forget to mention is that those computers had better be locked down and never connected to the internet, unless of course you want to be exposing your 8 year old child to random porn popups while they’re looking at photos of their dogs.  The other type being the ones where people are sent out looking for low price laptops and pass over Macs because they’re either too “cool” or too “expensive”.  Both of which are silly propositions to make, since if you were to compare hardware in any recent apple laptop to an equivalent Dell or HP, you’ll come out at about the same price (last time I did it, I think I was $50 in).

Now again, I’d like to caution that I really enjoy Apple’s – I work on one all day – that said, I grew up on PCs and when I finally did make the switch after working at Barking Dog Studios, I decided that the platform fit me much better.  What I’m really trying to say is that someone at Microsoft should take a good hard look at your advertising campaign, and perhaps give it a once-over to remove all the BS you’re pushing on people.  Or better yet, instead of spending millions on an advertising campaign, build a product that works and works well that people will want to spend exhorbitant amounts of money on.

Fun article for a bit of Tuesday morning nostalgia.  My personal favorite quote in the whole article:

In the beginning, Intel created the 8086 and its first 16-bit microprocessor.
And Intel said, Let there be x86: and there was x86.
And Intel saw the x86, that it was good.

Its amazing to think that in only 31 years we have come so far as a technologically advanced species.  Just stop to think for a minute, 30 years ago, not a single person in the world could even begin to imagine the depth and breadth of information we have at our fingertips, real-time communication without boundaries or borders.

Always amazes me to some extent.  Anyway, here’s the original article if anyone’s interested.

A Brief History of CPUs: 31 Awesome Years of x86 | Maximum PC.

Interesting article on Bluetooth 3.0, I haven’t really been following it – however, it seems as though somehow Bluetooth 3.0 are going to be creating temporary (hopefully secure) wireless networks for transmitting data.

Bluetooth 3.0 prepped for launch on April 21 – Ars Technica.

I’m curious though, how do they intend on dealing with frequency crossover from actual wifi networks.  In my experience, bluetooth networks are horribly prone to interferance and hopefully that doesn’t translate to the new specification.

Found this article in the Hamilton Spectator yesterday, glad to see the project I’ve been helping to propose has finally gotten the go ahead and even got some press.  So, now its go time for CFL Media, and the next few months are going to be rough as we work towards re-launching all the CFL / Team websites under one banner – similar to how the NFL or NHL handle their sites.

I’m fairly excited to be at the center of this project from a technological standpoint.  We have a lot of great ideas, that will probably end up as written guides on my blog – for instance we are currently evaluating Varnish HTTP accelerators to help deal with the huge spikes in load we tend to have, being an event driven business.

Anyway, thats all for now – read the spec article here:

http://www.thespec.com/Sports/article/523528

Life is super insane right now – between work, wedding planning, building a house and trying to get some form of sleep, I barely have time for anything these days… I will try and make more time though if thats even possible.

Well, a bit delayed, but a happy new year to everyone out there who may find my blog.  Speaking of my blog – I have a few plans for updating it significantly over the next few months – I’ll be keeping the URL structure the same, but overhauling the layout and functionality to better suit my needs.

So, santa was good to be this year – got a lot of clothes and other fun stuff, bought myself a GPS from Best Buy on Boxing day – btw, if anyone ever decides it may be a good idea to go to any store on boxing day, its NOT.  I literally spent 2 hours in Best Buy – 1.5 of them waiting in line to pay for my item.

Anyway, so far, happy with it, I ended up with the Garmin 250W, I haven’t updated the maps yet – perhaps I’ll do that today, but thus far it hasn’t failed me.

Well, it has been a while once again since I’ve had an opportunity to post on my blog.  Things have been progressing well for me, both in my personal life as well as in my career.  Though I still find myself without much time to do everything that needs doing, I’m beginning ot get my life in order.

Tania and I are continuing to work on the wedding planning, which is moving along at a decent pace.  Tania found an idea for a centerpiece that I really like, but requires some construction work on our part, so I think I’ll likely build a sample and see how things go.  We also managed to book our limousines for the day of.  We decided on a 1961 Rolls Royce for Tania’s transportation to the church, and consequently our transportation to the photos.  We also managed to get a 20 person stretch hummer in the deal, so, all in all should be a good day.  We’re still working on the DJ and Decorations, which are kind of the two big things remaining.

Beyond that, work is going well for me – I got a promotion a few months back, and things have been doing well – though I never seem to stop working now-a-days.  I’m now the Director of Technology for MRX and the Ticats, which is more than a full time job.  Hopefully will have some extra help soon though.

Anyway – have to finish up building a site – I’ll post more details on it here soon.