programmable self , ,

Desire paths, habits and the power of observation

I can’t remember where I first heard about desire paths.

Landscapers are apparently the people who know the most about this phenomenon in modern life. But we all see it – the worn footpath next to the sidewalk bit that didn’t quite curve enough or the improvised bike path next to the stairs in a grocery parking lot. People find their own way.

There’s a critical new skill people are developing around quantified self. And I think that skill set lies at the intersection of desire paths, habit formation and self-observation.
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community , ,

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Portland, April 21, 11-3pm, P-I-E

We’re hosting an Edit-a-thon in Portland this Saturday. Join us!

Selena and Pete invite you to a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon! Join us and the Portland wiki community as we dive into editing the biggest, most fascinating, and most collaborative encyclopedia in human history. This informal event will help you get your bearings, create an account, and start hacking in this decade-old project.

Never edited a web page? Never fear! We will give you a background/overview of how things work, and suggest some easy first-timer edits. Or, if you’re an old hand, please join us and share your valuable knowledge!
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postgresql , , , 1 Comment

Facebook acquires Instagram (and a Postgres cluster) for $1billion

Today’s big story is that Facebook just acquired Instagram for $1 billion.

Instagram is a hugely popular image sharing app – until recently only for iPhone. Last week they released an Android version, which caused many of my friends to finally start using it. 😉

But you know what’s an even bigger story? Instagram runs Postgres. And, their engineering team has been posting juicy tidbits about PGFouine and pgbouncer over the last year.

I love that companies are succeeding with Postgres in a huge way.

We’re seeing Postgres become the default technology choice for new tech companies. As those companies grow or are acquired, we’ll see Postgres becoming an important part of many more organizations.

It’s no coincidence that Bruce posted this morning about “The New Postgres Era“. The quality of the Postgres community’s software products is recognized, and the developers who use our software are succeeding.

postgres, postgresql , , , , 5 Comments

Inheritance and sharding with Postgres

A friend told me about their sharding scheme last night, and it made me very curious about how others are handling this problem. This question about database design turns into a devops issue, so it’s something really the entire development group and devops and DBAs need to be aware of and concerned about. And it’s not a problem exclusive to Postgres.
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postgres, postgresql , 1 Comment

Postgres Open 2012, SQL Server Guys discover Postgres, Tom Lane’s quote of the week & GSoC

Happy Friday!

Postgres Open‘s website is back up! Next week, we’ll be announcing sponsorship opportunities for 2012 and opening our Call for Speakers shortly after.

Some IT guys discovered Postgres and made a series of videos about what they’re learning. They came from Windows backgrounds, so their observations were a great introduction to what it’s like for non-Linux-y people when they first try Postgres out.
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Security and maintenance release for PostgreSQL: versions 9.1.3, 9.0.7, 8.4.11 and 8.3.18

Today, PostgreSQL Global Development Group released new versions of all active branches. This includes three security bugfixes, two of which are pretty obscure and one that fixes a possible security issue with restoring un-sanitized output from pg_dump. Details about the security issues are included in the release announcement.
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complaints , , 16 Comments

Student Loan Sharks: Mohela is shady (but the CSR I talked to was really nice)

UPDATED AGAIN: See bottom for contact information from a reporter.

Read this:

Mohela took over my loan from the Department of Education and claimed it could change the terms?

This happened to me. Mohela bought my student loan, sent me a letter telling me that the terms on my loan had been modified, and then sent me letters telling me that my monthly payments were overdue — even though I had paid.
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science , , , 3 Comments

“This story seems too negative. Can you fix that?”

I keep watching this video about cancer research. The speaker is Keith Baggerly, a statistician who (with a team) analyzed data from a series of scientific papers for reproducibility.

Specifically, they were looking at findings from research that determines whether or not a cell line is resistant to a drug – like a cancer fighting drug.
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