End October - time for the traditional meeting of the German and International "PHP family" - end of October? - Yes, the International PHP Conference is a bit earlier this year. Additonally the organizers moved the conference away from the industrial area of Mörfelden to the center of Mainz which sounds quite promising. Although I'll spend only around 24hrs at Mainz I'm looking really forward to the conference next week.

On Thursday morning I'll give a presentation about PHP 5.3, which will be quite interesting as one of the biggest features, namespaces, is still undergoing heavy discussions and the final syntax probably won't be clear when presenting - fortunately PHP 5.3 is much more than namespaces!

Sun will also be present at the …

I’m just back home from Brazil, where I went last Sunday in order to launch MySQL’s presence in Brazil and meet with MySQL users, developers, Sun customers, the press as well as with numerou Sun colleagues. “Is this your first time in Brazil?” was a frequent question (as one could expect), and I was happy to respond that it wasn’t. In fact, I have particularly fond memories of my first visit to Brazil in 2001, as that was the trip when I decided to join MySQL AB.

They say Rio de Janeiro is one of the most beautiful cities on the planet. Whoever “they” are, they’re right. The cone in the middle is Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain, der Zuckerhut, Sockertoppen).

As a European, I again noted …

This year's Systems trade fair will take place from October 21st-24th in Munich, Germany. Sun will be present there with a stand in the exhibition area (Hall B2, Stand 329) and we also sponsor a conference themed "Perspective Open Source" that will provide half-day sessions (in German) about opensource-related topics throughout the week.

Some highlights of what we'll present on our stand:

• MySQL
• Sun Fire Servers (with Intel Xeon Processors)
• Open Storage …

This year's Systems trade fair will take place from October 21st-24th in Munich, Germany. Sun will be present there with a stand in the exhibition area (Hall B2, Stand 329) and we also sponsor a conference themed "Perspective Open Source" that will provide half-day sessions (in German) about opensource-related topics throughout the week.

Some highlights of what we'll present on our stand:

• MySQL
• Sun Fire Servers (with Intel Xeon Processors)
• Open Storage …

Salle (MySQL EMEA Support Leader) just told me over IRC: “One has to be crazy to do the job Kaj is doing :)”. While it may not be mandatory, it does help. It also helps me in my free time, where I just climbed Mt Blanc with my fourteen year old son.

Die-hard marathoners or mountaineers I recommend to scroll towards the bottom. There, I have an account of the exact times and heights of ascent, how to survive Refuge Gouter etc. But let’s start from the beginning, in the spirit of the http://xkcd.com/77/ web comic “bored with the Internet”.

It all starts with a leisurely walk up the Gran Paradiso, 4061 m.

The usual sight is the heels of my son.

A MySQL cap protects me against excessive Sun.

It also helps when it’s snowy.

Valley panorama.

Specifically this view, of my son’s heels, was next to mandatory as I was …

Hello and greetings from DrupalCon 2008 in Szeged, Hungary!

We (Thierry Manfé, Scott Mattoon and myself) are having a great time manning our booth and talking about Drupal, MySQL and Open Source@Sun with the nice crowd of Drupal Users and Developers here. Sun is a gold sponsor of the event and we're giving a number of sessions as well.

Today I gave my first presentation about MySQL Backup and Security - Best practices - unfortunately I ran a tad bit out of time at the end... The slides have already been attached to the session page, so you can read up on the last few things I was going to talk about. Feel free to contact me, if you have further questions!

Tomorrow I'll be talking about …

On Saturday, I spent a couple of hours running with Alexander Stubb. No, Alex is not our newest recruit to the MySQL Support Team, he’s the Foreign Minister of Finland (the guy in the yellow T-shirt below).

But let me rewind to the beginning. I have been increasing my running to over 1200 km a year, and when I heard that the Münchner Stadtlauf half-marathon doesn’t crash with Finnish midsummer (something never to be missed), I registered for it and finished it in 1:45:58. And I calculated I would have a chance at going below four hours at a …

I'm off to do some MySQL training in Asia for the rest of the month. One week in Singapore, one week (and the weekend) in Bangalore.

Correction, Asia and the Emerging Markets. Apparently thanks to phenomenal growth, China and India have left Asia in the last few years (in our corporate parlance).

Always good to check flight status before you head to the airport, even (especially?) at 7am when you just checked 6 hours before. I now have 5 extra hours in beautiful John F Kennedy Airport, terminal 7. I haven't seen the new JetBlue terminal, but this one almost makes JFK feel like a major international airport.

Cathay Pacific seems a fine airline, though perhaps …

I'm off to do some MySQL training in Asia for the rest of the month. One week in Singapore, one week (and the weekend) in Bangalore.

Correction, Asia and the Emerging Markets. Apparently thanks to phenomenal growth, China and India have left Asia in the last few years (in our corporate parlance).

Always good to check flight status before you head to the airport, even (especially?) at 7am when you just checked 6 hours before. I now have 5 extra hours in beautiful John F Kennedy Airport, terminal 7. I haven't seen the new JetBlue terminal, but this one almost makes JFK feel like a major international airport.

Cathay Pacific seems a fine airline, though perhaps …

I'm off to do some MySQL training in Asia for the rest of the month. One week in Singapore, one week (and the weekend) in Bangalore.

Correction, Asia and the Emerging Markets. Apparently thanks to phenomenal growth, China and India have left Asia in the last few years (in our corporate parlance).

Always good to check flight status before you head to the airport, even (especially?) at 7am when you just checked 6 hours before. I now have 5 extra hours in beautiful John F Kennedy Airport, terminal 7. I haven't seen the new JetBlue terminal, but this one almost makes JFK feel like a major international airport.

Cathay Pacific seems a fine airline, though perhaps …