Google Tech Talk by MySQL dude teaches you how to benchmark and tune MySQL.

Performance Tuning Best Practices for MySQL - Google Video

This jacket offers a protection level to NIJ STD 0101.04 level 11A and European Police Standard for tactical vests RPS B (1999).

Bullet/Stab Proof Jacket

Holy moly that is a close up zoom of a camel (see my screenshot above) – and it works for other place on Google Maps too! Yes, it turns out that you can zoom in much more deeply onto Google Maps by doing this:

1. Select a location and switch to satellite view
2. Zoom in as far as you can, and click “link to this page” at the top right
3. Now replace the “z” parameter in the URL with a higher value, e.g. 20, 22, or 23, and wait. Some locations will now show more detailed imagery

I was able to get my condo up to 20, one more than normal. Apparently that is as high as Atlanta goes.

Super-Close Google Maps Zooms hack

Introduction
This is a feature spotlight to let you know about the many things Beryl will currently provide you with. Please note that this will include features both available and not available in Compiz, which Beryl was forked from. This is not a complete feature list, just a general overview of the features available in Beryl. A more complete feature list can be found on the weekly blog updates. There is also a new users guide here that contained a more complete howto for using beryl.

Beryl looks like XGL, but easier to setup.

Beryl-project.org

I'm putting our software, eMpower Lite Reporting, on the web for anyone to try. The casino it will report on? Xanadu.

card.jpg (JPEG Image, 500x657 pixels)

Introduction

The TeraStation is a nice device. My goal was to use it for backing up OS X machines. If I would have researched the product better I would not be writing about it now. Since the TeraStation uses Linux there is a solution to the problems.

The 1.5TB effective storage, RAID-5 Buffalo NAS boxes look cool.

Campworld - Hacking The Buffalo TeraStation to Work with Mac OS X

#!/bin/bash DATE=`date %F-%R`; BZFILE=/tmp/$DATE.sql.bz2; GPGFILE=$BZFILE.gpg; mysqldump --all-databases | bzip2 -c --best > $BZFILE; gpg --encrypt -r me@example.com $BZFILE; echo 'MySQL backup from abominus is attached' | mutt -a $GPGFILE \ -s '[backup] MySQL backup' self@gmail.com rm $GPGFILE;

Now I find it!

Gmail, GPG, and Backups via Email

Cheat for the GPG.

GPG Cheat Sheet

mysqldump --user=me --password=pass --no-create-db --no-create-info -w 'SUBSTR(myTimeStampField FROM 1 FOR 10) = SUBSTR(DATE_SUB(now(), INTERVAL 1 DAY) FROM 1 FOR 10)' myDatabase myTable | gpg --yes -e -a -o - -r me@myaddress.com | mailx -s "Entries in myDatabase.myTable for `date`" me@myaddress.com

If you export your public key and copy it to the database server for encryption, you will need to sign it with that server's key. So, generate a key with 'gpg --gen-key' and then sign your public key with 'gpg --lsign me@myaddress'

I was totally unable to get gpg on OS X or solaris to manually adjust the trust of my public key, so signing it was the only choice. It works.

Now, I know this is just two pipes and single set of back-ticks but... if you knew how long it took to get gpg to use my public key, and to get it to work without asking me if I was sure, and to get mysqldump to take a where clause, and to get it to generate useful output for day - 1 after I happened to fix the timezone for that server, and to be sure it worked with the delay in mail delivery...

You would pat me on the baxor.

How to mysqldump a single table's entries for the previous day, encrypt them with GPG, and mail them home OR The longest shell command of my career

How small can you make Open Solaris - Part 1

Solaris started its life as operating system for workstations and then progressed to servers. It has always been an operating system dominated by features, showing Sun's R&D capability. This is great if you are installing a server or a desktop, but has far too many features for building an appliance. Luckily the installing comes with some reduced installation clusters which tries to bring the installation down to the bare minimum. Unfortunately the last time I looked the smallest install was still several hundred megabytes. Linux on the other hand has had a project going for while now called "Damn Small Linux", which strips Linux down to around 50 megabytes. This is a perfect base to start building an appliance, build your own distro, or strip the kernel down further for an embedded device.

Can Solaris become as small as "Damn Small Linux". The answer is a resounding yes (and probably smaller). Lets investigate how this can be done. The first thing to do is to state the goal, which is to be able to successfully boot into a shell and execute a simple command such as 'ls'. The logical place to start is with the smallest running version of Solaris supplied by Sun. If you have a x86 grub version of Solaris you will find a 52 megabyte file in your /boot directory called x86.miniroot-safe. This file is a gzipped UFS image that is booted when you select "Solaris failsafe" from the grub menu. Using it to boot to single user mode will mount the root filesystem and give you a root shell. It also contains the code to start a Solaris installation.

Now we have found an ideal candidate, lets start ripping it apart. The first step is to copy it (as you may need it if you break something), and setup new menu option in grub.

Solaris Things: How small can you make Open Solaris - Part 1