Mike Hillyer’s Personal Webspace

I see so many flight crews carrying (pulling) TravelPro luggage that I knew one of two things had to true:

1. The crews get a significant discount.
2. The crews know it is of high quality and worth the cost.

I finally got curious enough to ask the crew of a recent flight and it turns out the answer is 3) All of the above:

1. They (at least as Air Canada crew members) are given the bags.
2. You can have the bags when you pry them from their cold, dead hands.

Seems that the typical case for them was a bag that had lasted years in spite of being manhandled daily and thrown into the cargo hold of the plane an average of five times a day (gate checked).

All in all I got a very strong endorsement to the quality and durability of the bags.

I posted this at the new blog but it never hit Planet MySQL, so we’ll see if posting it here does the trick.

Learn all about it at http://www.mikehillyer.com/mysql/speaking-at-the-2008-mysql-conference-expo/

Finally finished it:

Any for those wondering about what kind of barrel distortion there is on the wide end of the Nikon 18-200 VR lens, this shows it pretty nicely.

I’ve looked at the iPhone and while I can see myself really wanting it, the lack of 3G data I can tether to the laptop has been a minus. I also speculate that my fingers and its touch keyboard would not get along well, though that is mainly speculation. Of course, being on Verizon also makes the use of an AT&T product difficult. So far I have been relatively happy with my Motorola Q. The keyboard is not great but it gets by.

But come black friday I have a new desire:

The touch screen of an iPhone (we’ll see how it stacks up UI-wise), the EVDO I know and love and…

A flip out keyboard and second screen worth flipping out over!

Now that’s an awesome combination.

Linky Goodness

I’m not one to use the phrase ‘full of win’ too often, but today’s xkcd certainly qualifies for anyone with a little SQL knowledge:

Via WWDN

I brought my camera, along with my new VR lens, to the Blue Man Group concert (more performers should explicitly allow cameras like they did).

The VR certainly worked as advertised, I was getting sharp pictures at 200mm with only a 1/30 shutter speed (one elbow on the chair back for stability but otherwise handheld).

Of course, the difference between a VR lens and a fast lens is that in this case the slow shutter still meant I lost a lot of shots to motion blur from the performer’s movements, but when it worked it worked very well.

The results using VR with a 3.5-5.4 lens makes me want this lens with VR on a 70-200 at 2.8, the combination would be killer shooting indoors.

Oh and just to note, the edge darkening in the photo is actually the edges of a pin spot, the lens is not doing that. The full set is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhillyer/sets/72157602163624573/

Found this today in the #mysql channel on Freenode, a SQLite implementation for .NET:

http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/

Could be handy as a DB backend for single user apps on Windows.

I went back to the Rockies and re-shot my previous waterfall, this time with a slower shutter speed:

I’ve always liked the guys at Webyog, the produce a good quality MySQL GUI called SQLYog that has evolved quite nicely over the years thanks to the fact that they listen to feedback and come back with a product that just gets better and better. They certainly produce a solid competitor to MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser, using an interface that most find more familiar.

The latest news is that they have now come back with a competitor to the MySQL Network Monitoring and Advisory Service, called MonYog.

Where the MySQL offering involves a server and a collection of agents, MonYog is designed around a desktop application that directly connects to the MySQL servers being monitored. Which solution is best is probably a matter of scale, but the desktop approach should be acceptable for many installation sizes.

I saw an early demo at the MySQL Conference earlier this year and was really impressed. Check out the screenshots and I think you’ll want to download the demo.

Last night I found out my parents were going to an analog auction and I thought it might be fun to hold up a paddle while an auctioneer on speed called out prices, so we packed up the kids and headed over to join them.

The first thing I learned is that small kids and an auction hall do not mix, so we only spent about twenty minutes at the auction.

The twenty minutes were well spent though, as I nabbed an unopened Roomba Discovery for about a third of list price. Looks like a retailer was unloading it as unsold stock.

It’s a fun gadget, but terrifies the kids. Time to call Old Glory and get some robot insurance.