So I worked with MySQL for a full 2 days, basically one day on an airplane and another day in the new employee introduction we had in the Orlando meeting. Then I wake up the next morning, Mårten Mickos stands up on the podium with a shaky voice and tells the audience that Sun has bought MySQL. Then there is that 5 seconds of quiet when people realise that it was not a joke, it's for real. Or like me, it was 5 seconds when I realised that, hey, MySQL, that's us.

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Welcome to the first entry of my blog.  My name is Martin Farach-Colton.  I’m co-founder and CTO of a startup called Tokutek.  I’m also a professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University. 

Tokutek is based on a bunch of research I did with Michael Bender (SUNY Stony Brook) and Bradley Kuszmaul (MIT).  The purpose of this blog is—more or less—to explain why we started this company.  What I mean is that we have a new way at looking at memory systems based on a relatively new algorithmic approach called Cache Oblivious Algorithmics.  I’d like to tell you what that means for systems and users.

Our new approach is encapsulated in the products we’ll be producing over the coming months and years.  But this is not the place to talk about our products.  Instead, I’d like to talk about my take on memory systems, and what can be done to improve databases and file systems.

…

So I managed to answer all those questions correctly and the US Border Control officer kindly let us into the country. It was easy since the questions were the same as the last time I visited the US in 2000. Filling this sheet is always a fun time, it makes me wonder wanna know wether there exist any statistics on how many terrorists and drug trafficants get caught by accidentally filling in the wrong box :-) Then of course there are some tricky questions, what if you are traveling to the US to engange in immoral but legal activities. From what I know sitting naked in the sauna would already be suspicious here ;-D

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CMSWire asked me to be the first they interview for their brand new column Flash Quiz. If you ever wondered how much I sleep and whether I like fancy cars, check out Flash Quiz: Sandro Groganz Speaks.

Modified by Henrik Ingo from
original picture by "Just Taken Pics'" @ Flickr. CC-BY

I haven't written much on this blog related to my work. There's a simple reason: Apart from some welcome exceptions, my work at Sesca is not at all related to Open Source. And even when it is, we are not supposed to talk about our work much in public. Also, as a manager my work is rather boring sometimes, not something I'd want to write about.

All of this is about to change though. On Monday I will start working as a Sales Engineer (or some call it "pre-sales consultant") for MySQL! Here's a list of things I'm looking forward to:

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We are currently working on Cool Stack 1.1.1 which will have the following components updated, in addition to fixing known bugs :

• Apache 2.2.6 : Add mod_proxy, mod_fcgid, SMF support
  
• PHP 5.2.4      : Add dtrace extension, add new fastcgi version for use with non-Apache webservers
• APC 3.0.14
  
• Suhosin 0.9.20
  
• MySQL 5.0.45: Add SMF support
  
• Perl 5.8.8       : Add Sys:Syslog, DBI, DBD-mysql extensions
• memcached 1.2.2
• squid 2.6
• tomcat 5.5.23

I would love to get feedback on this. Is your favorite module/extension missing ? Are there bugs/issues you have run into that haven't been reported on the forum ?

We are currently working on Cool Stack 1.1.1 which will have the following components updated, in addition to fixing known bugs :

• Apache 2.2.6 : Add mod_proxy, mod_fcgid, SMF support
  
• PHP 5.2.4      : Add dtrace extension, add new fastcgi version for use with non-Apache webservers
• APC 3.0.14
  
• Suhosin 0.9.20
  
• MySQL 5.0.45: Add SMF support
  
• Perl 5.8.8       : Add Sys:Syslog, DBI, DBD-mysql extensions
• memcached 1.2.2
• squid 2.6
• tomcat 5.5.23

I would love to get feedback on this. Is your favorite module/extension missing ? Are there bugs/issues you have run into that haven't been reported on the forum ?

We are currently working on Cool Stack 1.1.1 which will have the following components updated, in addition to fixing known bugs :

• Apache 2.2.6 : Add mod_proxy, mod_fcgid, SMF support
  
• PHP 5.2.4      : Add dtrace extension, add new fastcgi version for use with non-Apache webservers
• APC 3.0.14
  
• Suhosin 0.9.20
  
• MySQL 5.0.45: Add SMF support
  
• Perl 5.8.8       : Add Sys:Syslog, DBI, DBD-mysql extensions
• memcached 1.2.2
• squid 2.6
• tomcat 5.5.23

I would love to get feedback on this. Is your favorite module/extension missing ? Are there bugs/issues you have run into that haven't been reported on the forum ?

Diary: Saturday 16th June 2007

Today, Miss She-BA Sheeri Kritzer married partner Tony in Boston. For those that remember, Sheeri was the 2007 Community Advocate of the Year at the MySQL Conference.

The official photos and videos are already up, so I’ve add my snaps online now. This was an excellent day, it had some the best planning I’ve seen in a …

My decision about 1 year ago to start doing training was a strange move for me. It was totally new and scary field for me, but like I said at the moment, according to my experience all change has been for good. I think I can trust my intuition.

Like Seth Godin said (more than) once:
Safe is risky

I found a short article about How we learn which summarizes my point of view after 5 courses.

10% of what we READ

20% of what we HEAR

30% of what we SEE

50% of what we SEE and HEAR

70% of what is DISCUSSED with OTHERS

80% of what …