Looking for a new computer to start the new year with? You might want to check out the information on CPUs available in the Computerworld CPU Buyer's Guide. There's also a handy CPU Buyer's Guide: Quick Reference Charts.
Looking at that chart, it's difficult to choose between the three Intel CPUs at $999, but for my money, I'd go for the Core 2 Extreme QX6700; with four cores, I can imagine doing serious processing with that.
Just in case you think I’ve forgotten about things, I haven’t, I’m just somewhat buried.
What’s been happening? Well Busy New Year will explain part of it.
On the Sun/Solaris front:
Stay up to date with Planet MCslp.
Frank Mash has started a brilliant series on making the best of running MySQL on the Solaris platform:
No, I haven’t missed one out, Frank assures us that Part 5 is on the way!
I wish we had a DTrace interface to MySQL…
One of the unique elements of MySQL is the ability to use a different storage engine to store your data. You can even mix and match storage engines within the same database.
One of the unique elements of MySQL is the ability to use a different storage engine to store your data. You can even mix and match storage engines within the same database.
Wow - if you hadn’t noticed, it’s been pretty quiet round here recently, and the reason is that things have simply been very busy. I’ve been churning out the IBM stuff (including some that hasn’t made it yet) - the main highlight is the big three-part tutorial series on using Application Virtualization as a grid-enabling solution (start with Application virtualization, Part 1: Level 1 - Abstracting your grid infrastructure). Part 3 should be coming out soon.
Also, things at MySQL are hectic - probably as best evidenced by posts like Slashdot | MySQL Falcon Storage Engine Open Sourced. One of the links embedded in there is the documentation on Falcon - written by yours truly - and accessible directly in the documentation The Falcon Storage Engine.
At the moment, I’m mostly working on Replication, some improvements to the APIs section (and some further updates for Connectors, now that C/ODBC 5 is on the way).
Hopefully things wont be as busy though; there’s a bunch of stuff to follow up on here.
BT have come up with a Digital Cost Calculator, primarily to help drive traffic to their online backup service, BT Digital Vault.
The tool can provide a useful guide to how much it might cost to replace the items, although as detailed by Simon Perry at Digital-Lifestyles.info (BT Digital Cost Calculator: Value Your Digital Life - Digital-Lifestyles.info) the calculations are somewhat basic and flawed.
With the new year here, it's time to make some resolutions. How about making sure your backups are running nicely so you are protected for the rest of the year? Back in October, Computer ran a wonderful series of articles on making sure your backups are running smoothly, which I've collected together here for quick reference:
We've just come back from a brief stay away, and of course I took my back-ups with me. One of those is a hard disk (2.5") which at 60GB is just about large enough to carry a copy of all my files and stuff which isn't otherwise archived away on DVD (onsite and offsite). The problem is that 60GB is not enough for everything I might want to store.
Meanwhile, in my MacBook Pro, 120GB sounded like a lot, but by the time you include the OS, the files I use regularly and all the virtual machines (through the always excellent Parallels), it really doesn't seem like a lot.
Happy New Year for 2007 to everybody!
As is the custom, I thought I'd write down a few of my own personal resolutions (computer/IT related, of course) to serve as both inspiration and information: