October 20, 2004
My Book on Slashdot, or... Many of My Friends Have No Life
And here's how I know. Within 10 minutes of the Slashdot review of High Performance MySQL, many of them contacted me via IM, e-mail, and whatnot. It frightens me to think of how often they're reloading that page.
Anyway, the review is quite positive. I'm glad Steve liked the book and fully expected all the "MySQL SUCKS!" comments that appeared moments later. Apparently some nerds have an infinite capacity for fighting vi vs. emacs, mysql vs. postgresql, gnome vs. kde, and all those other stupid battles.
Oh, well. As long as half of them buy the book, I'm happy. :-)
June 23, 2004
Chapter 7 (Replication) of High Perforamnce MySQL is On-Line
You can find a complete copy of the Replication chapter from High Performance MySQL (my book) over on dev.mysql.com.
Read it.
Learn something.
Then buy a copy.
Learn even more.
Marvel at your new MySQL knowledge.
Then send me a good resume so I can get you a job here at Yahoo.
Or not. :-)
About a month ago, they also posted the full text of chatper 6 (Performance Tuning). If that doesn't convince you to buy a copy, then I'm out of luck. We're not giving them anymore chapters to put up.
(Hmm. This may be the first time I've pimped my book at my employer in the same blog entry. Weird.)
April 19, 2004
High Performance MySQL (the book) is Shipping!
As noted on our site for the book, O'Reilly brought the first copies to the 2004 MySQL User's Conference in Orlando and it had sold out by the middle of the second day.
Woohoo!
Now Amazon reports that the book is shipping in 1-2 weeks (rather than being pre-order), and we even have our first customer review posted too.
I read the front matter and first three chapters on the plane ride home last night, pen in hand. I didn't mark as much stuff as I expected to but did manage to find a couple of dumb things we may want to fix for subsequent printings.
Thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered a copy or bought one at the show. The response has been amazing so far!
Derek has a picture of the books for sale at the show booth. I'll link to it as soon as he posts the pics.
Update: Posted.
April 11, 2004
High Performance MySQL is Hot off the Press!
If you happen to wander by The O'Reilly and Associates web site soon, you'll notice a new book featured in the "Hot off the Press" section of the home page:
High Performance MySQL is an insider's guide to the poorly documented issues of MySQL reliability, scalability, and performance. The book gives in-depth coverage of MySQL indexing and optimization so you can make better use of these key features. You'll learn practical replication, backup, and load-balancing strategies with information that goes beyond available tools to discuss their effects in real-life environments. And you'll learn the supporting techniques you need to carry out these tasks, including advanced configuration, benchmarking, and investigating logs. Sample Chapter 7, Replication, is available free online.
In related news, I got my first physical copy of the book today. (Had I gone to work on Friday, I would have had it then like Derek did.) Over on the High Performance MySQL weblog, you can read about the first review as well as other book news as it comes in.
I'm headed to the MySQL User Conference in Orlando for the week (and I almost have my slides done too!), so blogging will probably be light and MySQL related when it happens. Hopefully the WiFi is up and running well.
O'Reilly plans to have copies available at the conference. Why not join us in Orlando and get an autographed copy? You can buy one before they're available in stores! :-)
February 08, 2004
Book: Your Money or Your Life
A few weeks ago, I attempted to read the book Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. It had 4.5 out of 5 stars in 118 reviews on Amazon.com. The descriptions made it sound both useful and interesting.
I never finished it. And, as a result, I will not link to it or endorse it in any way. If you'd like my copy, it's yours for free.
Don't get me wrong. The book is well intended and has a good message. But it delivers it in a way that bugs the hell out of me. If the authors had removed the all-too-frequent "real people" passages that the book is full of and simply stuck to the basics, it would have been excellent. And about 38 pages long.
After an hour of trying to read the first few chapters, I finished by skimming the book, greping out the interesting ideas, and putting in the "done, won't read again" pile.
This is sad, really, because the book has some very valuable and important things to say about the often inflated value of "work life" and personal income in our society. Far to many people don't stop to think about living a life rather than living a job. Perhaps one day I'll write about my longer-term plan for not working full-time until I retire or die. The bits of this book that I did read helped me to solidify that.