Re: december meeting wrapup

Hello!

Thank you everyone for attending last night's meeting! I had such a
good time. We had a great turnout - ten people! I was able to give
Audrey my last copy of the Douglas' PostgreSQL book, and we all
participated in hazing a new guy, James, who claimed to like Python
and had the best quote of the night (pardon me if I make a mistake in
the retelling):

Randal: "Start a nested loop, and you can go get a cup of coffee..."
James: "Uh - start a nested loop, and you better go to Columbia and
pick your own beans."

During introductions (which happened at the end of the meeting), we
learned not only that James is working on an "Anti-Rails" framework,
but that we had Audrey, the Rails developer, on hand -- setting the
stage for our first PDXPUG grudge match.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Gabrielle started the meeting off with her programming travelogue,
which for a short time can be found at: http://www.hevanet.com/
gabrielle/slide0.html

I really enjoyed her approach to project sharing -- I'd love to hear
impressions from the rest of you who were there. We're trying to
come up with re-occurring features, and it would be nice if different
people could drop in and give a presentation from their project
journals.

I gave the second presentation entitled "EXPLAIN: briefly". I will
post the slides this evening. They include links to further reading,
and build off of the queries Gabrielle used. I would just have
Randal forward the PDF I sent him, but it contained a few errors that
I'm fixing before I post the final version.

I've gotten two volunteers for April/May presentations, but we need
some ideas for January/February/March! Please don't be shy.

Ideas:
* Something awesome you're doing with 8.2
* Something horrible 8.2 fixed for you
* Some other procedural language presentation
* Python and PostgreSQL
* the PostgreSQL C API
* Slony
* What you wish would be in 8.3
* Why you miss David Wheeler at our meetings
* blah blah blah?

---

The next meeting will be on January 16th, 7pm. We will start off
with a 5 minute summary of an EXPLAIN QUERY OPERATOR! I'll bet you
can't wait to find out which one. The main topic is still TBD.

We will close with the obligatory MySQL update. Randal helped us out
last night with the provocative "MySQL has dropped support for most
Linux Distributions." Please keep an eye out for similar gems!

Finally, Rafael raised the spectre of podcasting once again. I will
get everything together to actually do the podcast next time. If
anyone has a USB thumb-drive that they can commit to bringing to the
meeting to help facilitate this, please let me know.

Have a lovely holiday! I'm on vacation starting Friday... so see you
after the new year.

-selena

--
Selena Deckelmann
Information Systems Manager
Chris King Precision Components
www.chrisking.com / 503.972.4050 x230

For the record, the framework I'm working on isn't anti-rails in the sense
that it seeks out Rails applications and destroys them. It's just that
where Rails starts with the M of MVC and generates the others, my framework
starts with the V and generates the others. So, it's more "backward Rails"
than "anti-rails".

Oh, who am I kidding, Rails just sucks.

It was a pleasure meeting you all. Have fun at the next meeting - I fear I
have a rehearsal that night from 7:00 until 10:00, but I may stop by and say
hello beforehand.

James Terwilliger
Portland State University

-----Original Message-----
From: pdxpug-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org [mailto:pdxpug-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On
Behalf Of Selena Deckelmann
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 3:33 PM
To: pdxpug(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: [pdxpug] december meeting wrapup

Hello!

Thank you everyone for attending last night's meeting! I had such a
good time. We had a great turnout - ten people! I was able to give
Audrey my last copy of the Douglas' PostgreSQL book, and we all
participated in hazing a new guy, James, who claimed to like Python
and had the best quote of the night (pardon me if I make a mistake in
the retelling):

Randal: "Start a nested loop, and you can go get a cup of coffee..."
James: "Uh - start a nested loop, and you better go to Columbia and
pick your own beans."

During introductions (which happened at the end of the meeting), we
learned not only that James is working on an "Anti-Rails" framework,
but that we had Audrey, the Rails developer, on hand -- setting the
stage for our first PDXPUG grudge match.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Gabrielle started the meeting off with her programming travelogue,
which for a short time can be found at: http://www.hevanet.com/
gabrielle/slide0.html

I really enjoyed her approach to project sharing -- I'd love to hear
impressions from the rest of you who were there. We're trying to
come up with re-occurring features, and it would be nice if different
people could drop in and give a presentation from their project
journals.

I gave the second presentation entitled "EXPLAIN: briefly". I will
post the slides this evening. They include links to further reading,
and build off of the queries Gabrielle used. I would just have
Randal forward the PDF I sent him, but it contained a few errors that
I'm fixing before I post the final version.

I've gotten two volunteers for April/May presentations, but we need
some ideas for January/February/March! Please don't be shy.

Ideas:
* Something awesome you're doing with 8.2
* Something horrible 8.2 fixed for you
* Some other procedural language presentation
* Python and PostgreSQL
* the PostgreSQL C API
* Slony
* What you wish would be in 8.3
* Why you miss David Wheeler at our meetings
* blah blah blah?

---

The next meeting will be on January 16th, 7pm. We will start off
with a 5 minute summary of an EXPLAIN QUERY OPERATOR! I'll bet you
can't wait to find out which one. The main topic is still TBD.

We will close with the obligatory MySQL update. Randal helped us out
last night with the provocative "MySQL has dropped support for most
Linux Distributions." Please keep an eye out for similar gems!

Finally, Rafael raised the spectre of podcasting once again. I will
get everything together to actually do the podcast next time. If
anyone has a USB thumb-drive that they can commit to bringing to the
meeting to help facilitate this, please let me know.

Have a lovely holiday! I'm on vacation starting Friday... so see you
after the new year.

-selena

--
Selena Deckelmann
Information Systems Manager
Chris King Precision Components
www.chrisking.com / 503.972.4050 x230

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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> Gabrielle started the meeting off with her programming travelogue,
> which for a short time can be found at:
http://www.hevanet.com/gabrielle/slide0.html

I've added a slide with my First Rule of Project Karma, for those who
missed the talk.

Here's the link to postgresql autodoc, which I used to generate the
schema graphics (for Dia):
http://www.rbt.ca/autodoc/

- gabrielle -
"5 out of 4 people have a problem with math."

On Dec 20, 2006, at 3:32 PM, Selena Deckelmann wrote:

> During introductions (which happened at the end of the meeting), we
> learned not only that James is working on an "Anti-Rails"
> framework, but that we had Audrey, the Rails developer, on hand --
> setting the stage for our first PDXPUG grudge match.

Sounds like fun. Sorry I missed it. As someone who has worked on both
sides now, I'd have had fun with that matchup!

> I really enjoyed her approach to project sharing -- I'd love to
> hear impressions from the rest of you who were there. We're trying
> to come up with re-occurring features, and it would be nice if
> different people could drop in and give a presentation from their
> project journals.

I found Gabrielle's 15 minute PDX.pm presentation last year highly
memorable. If this latest presentation was in the same style, I'm
sure you all found it highly entertaining.

> I've gotten two volunteers for April/May presentations, but we need
> some ideas for January/February/March! Please don't be shy.
>
> Ideas:
> * Something awesome you're doing with 8.2
> * Something horrible 8.2 fixed for you
> * Some other procedural language presentation
> * Python and PostgreSQL
> * the PostgreSQL C API

I had offered to do something on this, hadn't I? Alas, I have far
less time these days than when I offered. But I could probably put
together something in a few hours based on a data type I created.
It'd be more on how to create new data types in C than on the Pg API.
But it might be better if I first did a presentation on creating new
data types with DOMAINs. I owe ORA an article on that, anyway, so I
have to find the tuits eventually. ;-)

> * Slony
> * What you wish would be in 8.3
> * Why you miss David Wheeler at our meetings

Because of the beer! He misses the beer!

> We will close with the obligatory MySQL update. Randal helped us
> out last night with the provocative "MySQL has dropped support for
> most Linux Distributions." Please keep an eye out for similar gems!

I've got a growing list.

> Finally, Rafael raised the spectre of podcasting once again. I
> will get everything together to actually do the podcast next time.
> If anyone has a USB thumb-drive that they can commit to bringing to
> the meeting to help facilitate this, please let me know.

What happened to the recording of my last talk?

> Have a lovely holiday! I'm on vacation starting Friday... so see
> you after the new year.

Happy new year, everyone!

Cheers,

David

On Dec 21, 2006, at 9:57 AM, David E. Wheeler wrote:

> On Dec 20, 2006, at 3:32 PM, Selena Deckelmann wrote:
>
>> I've gotten two volunteers for April/May presentations, but we
>> need some ideas for January/February/March! Please don't be shy.
>>
>> Ideas:
>> * Something awesome you're doing with 8.2
>> * Something horrible 8.2 fixed for you
>> * Some other procedural language presentation
>> * Python and PostgreSQL
>> * the PostgreSQL C API
>
> I had offered to do something on this, hadn't I? Alas, I have far
> less time these days than when I offered. But I could probably put
> together something in a few hours based on a data type I created.
> It'd be more on how to create new data types in C than on the Pg
> API. But it might be better if I first did a presentation on
> creating new data types with DOMAINs. I owe ORA an article on that,
> anyway, so I have to find the tuits eventually. ;-)

The DOMAINs talk sounds great. I actually have a talk lined up for
January now (thanks, Rafael & Bill!) -- what do you think about
giving the DOMAINs talk in February?

>> Finally, Rafael raised the spectre of podcasting once again. I
>> will get everything together to actually do the podcast next
>> time. If anyone has a USB thumb-drive that they can commit to
>> bringing to the meeting to help facilitate this, please let me know.
>
> What happened to the recording of my last talk?

Not sure! Is Chris Dawson on the list? He was going to grab it and
put it somewhere.

-selena

On Dec 21, 2006, at 12:23 PM, Selena Deckelmann wrote:

> The DOMAINs talk sounds great. I actually have a talk lined up for
> January now (thanks, Rafael & Bill!) -- what do you think about
> giving the DOMAINs talk in February?

Sure, I can do that.

—D