Monthly Archives: March 2011

postgres, postgresql , , ,

GSoC 2011, accepting submissions starting March 28!

The PostgreSQL project has been accepted into the Google Summer of Code 2011.

Students may begin submitting proposals starting March 28, concluding
on April 8.

Development work runs from May 23 through August 15. For students,
suggested projects, ideas and details are at:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/GSoC_2011
Our GSoC landing page is at:
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2011/postgresql

We encourage students to contact project admins – me, Josh Berkus and
Robert Treat this year – if they have questions. Once students have a
proposal in mind, we will encourage them to engage with pgsql-hackers
to flesh out their proposals and get feedback the same way that all
contributors do. For those of you who have been around for previous
GSoCs, this should be familiar to you. 🙂

Many thanks to the 15 volunteer mentors and admins this year (in no
particular order):

  • Dave Page – Past mentor – pgAdmin, Windows, Packaging, Infrastructure
  • Heikki Linnakangas – Postgres Committer
  • Magnus Hagander – Postgres Committer, pgAdmin
  • Guillaume Lelarge – pgAdmin
  • Jehan-Guillaume de Rorthais – phpPgAdmin
  • Joe Abbate – Python-related, catalog-related projects
  • David E. Wheeler – Perl-related, extensions, PGXN
  • Mark Wong – benchmarking, monitoring, performance
  • Tatsuo Ishii – Postgres Committer, pgpool-II
  • Stephen Frost – Postgres contributor
  • Devrim Gündüz – Administration related software (dashboard)
  • Josh Berkus – auto-configuration, performance testing
  • Selena Deckelmann – configuration, testing
  • Andreas Scherbaum – performance, configuration, testing
  • Robert Treat – Past mentor 2x, co-admin, Mentor Summit attendee.

We can always accept more mentors! Actual assignment to projects
depends greatly on the proposals from students. Please contact me if
you are interested.

user groups , ,

Note from Nashville

I was lucky enough to catch a meeting of a new Arduino user group in Nashville last night. That picture above is a prototype of a segway-like machine that uses tilt sensors to turn. (Segways use a handle-twist mechanism to turn.) I spent an hour or so reading through code, and helping identify the various constants we need to pull values for off of the equipment Jay used for his project.

We met at in a building that houses a distillery in a building called the Corsair.

The person demo’ing was Jay Settle, a brewmaster who, along with his brother, is a tinkerer. Jay showed some videos of projects like this one:

He’s also automated the work of distilling by modifying some 1920s-era copper stills with Ardiunos and temperature probes. He put together a terrific site showing his work on it. Don’t miss all of the rest of the projects on the links at the top of the page, including my favorite, the remote mower.

Anyway, the group is awesome, and you should go! If you know any hackers in Nashville, send them to the mailing list.

Nashville is not really known for it’s hacker culture, but it’s alive and well and finding its center. I have to think that the BarCampNashville has something to do with that – giving locals a reason and a deadline for showcasing ideas. Now, more conferences like the PHP Community Conference are picking Nashville. Anyway, I looking forward to seeing what comes next from the Arduino hackers!

twitter

Weekly tweet digest for 2011-03-13

twitter

Weekly tweet digest for 2011-03-13