Category Archives: postgresql

postgresql

interesting film: Killer of Sheep

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/movies/25kehr.html?ex=1332475200&en=f273f126a4d175d3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Mr. Burnett never dreamed that his film would get a commercial release. But today “Killer of Sheep” is widely acknowledged as one of the most insightful and authentic dramas about African-American life on film, as well as one of the earliest examples of the politically aware black independent cinema that was taking shape in the 1970s.

Technorati Tags: ,

postgresql

a greener apple

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/ Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well. It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple’s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they’re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we’re changing our policy. Now I’d like to tell you what we are doing to remove toxic chemicals from our new products, and to more aggressively recycle our old products.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

postgresql

gender diversity at web conferences

Gender diversity is popping up again in the blogs. Just thought I'd pass these along. http://www.kottke.org/07/02/gender-diversity-at-web-conferences

With that in mind, I collected some information about some of the most visible past and upcoming conferences in the tech/design/web space. I'm reasonably sure that the organizers of these conferences were aware of at least one of the above recent complaints about gender diversity at conferences (they were both linked widely in the blogosphere), so it will be interesting to see if those complaints were taken seriously by them.

And a site that lists potential speakers for conferences:

http://www.personism.com/2006/10/11/list-of-women-speakers-for-your-conference/

Making a list is just a start, but what a freaking list it is. I am psyched.

Many thanks to all the contributors to comment threads here on Personism, and over on design*sponge. Marc and Sara over at Wooster Collective also provided some excellent suggestions.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Continue reading →

postgresql

near-zero energy home

http://www.betterhomebetterplanet.com/index.php?mode=systems From BASF, but the website has a fair amount of detail. And they make some pretty crazy claims:

The BASF Near-Zero Energy Home-Paterson, N.J., harnesses the power of the sun to generate electricity and heat water. As a result, the home draws almost no power from the grid, greatly reducing utility costs. Two solar energy systems are integrated into the BASF ULTRA-Cool® coated metal roof from Englert.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

conference, pgconference, postgres, postgresql

postgresql conference east 2008 – announcement

Joshua Drake sent out the announcement for the PostgreSQL Conference East ’08 just the other day. We’re both super excited about getting the community together in Maryland. I’m also really looking forward to meeting the many contributors living in that area for the first time.

I was originally drawn to the University of Maryland as a site for our conference because of UMLUG, a Linux student group. They had an intro to PostgreSQL and MySQL meeting in early November, and I’ve chatted a little with their enthusiastic President.

I’ve also been in touch with the Computer Science department. Professor Louiqa Raschid has been invaluable – getting me in touch with the department head, Professor Larry Davis. The UMD CS department is now sponsoring us! I’m looking forward to collaborating with the students and faculty to make this a fantastic conference.

Joshua has also posted the members list for our conference and speakers committees. If you have an idea for a talk or tutorial, please don’t hesitate to contact us! With the 8.3 beta available, and the release just around the corner, there are so many things out there to talk about. Keep the submissions coming!

pdxpug, postgres, postgresql, user groups, women 1 Comment

women’s sized t-shirts for postgresql

I have been looking into getting some woman-sized PostgreSQL shirts, in addition to the more typical men-sized tshirts. The particular style is American Apparel shirts, style # 2102. The shirt says ‘PostgreSQL’ in small print on the front, and has the big elephant logo on the back. We’ll most likely ask for a $20 donation to the PostgreSQL non-profit for each shirt.

So, I’m conducting a small poll:

If you are interested in a woman-sized shirt, please email or comment on this thread with a quantity, and size (XS, S, M, L, XL). If you would not wear a PostgreSQL woman-sized shirt yourself, please consider whether you would maybe get one as a gift for someone else this holiday season 🙂

I would be overjoyed to have my mailbox clogged with requests, so please don’t be shy!

I’m just trying to get a feel for the numbers, so your comment won’t be considered an order. Also, please forward this to anyone you think might be interested.

pdxpug, postgres, postgresql, sysadmin, user groups

ptop – meeting summary from last nights pdxpug

Last night’s meeting was about ptop and Mark Wong’s efforts to make an interactive, command-line tool for monitoring the current status of a PostgreSQL database.

For our meeting, Mark set up a test operating system on a USB drive, and bravely demo’d his new software.

Mark got the idea for ptop a few months ago, and went looking for the source code to top to get started. After a few days of hacking, he had a some useful features he wanted to share. So, he’s set up a project and started gathering developers:

http://pgfoundry.org/projects/ptop

The features currently supported include displaying:

  • Current queries
  • Query plans
  • Locks
  • User table statistics
  • User index statistics

Continue reading →