What is it with INT(11) columns?

At every company I’ve worked for and many open source projects I see MyISAM tables with INT(11) columns. Why?

MySQL’s INT columns are limited to 2^32 unsigned (4,294,967,295) which if you count the length is 10 digits long. Therefore INT(11) is impossible - although it worth noting the length on integer columns is only the display width.

If you’re looking to reduce the size of your tables/rows use the appropriate type of integer column.

</rant>

Time for an upgrade

It’s been almost 5 years since I last upgraded my PC. How times change, I never would have thought I’d be considering a laptop to replace a desktop machine any time soon but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

When I’m not in the process of upgrading I pay little attention to PC hardware so I was surprised to see one terabyte disks available (for only £230!) and even solid state disks (SSD) are now financially viable.

I’m seriously considering upgrading to SSD in Q4, with no moving parts noise and heat is greatly reduced, battery life is improved and they’re more robust than conventional hard drives (being dropped isn’t a problem). The only downsides are price, write performance and lifespan.

Ironically when it comes to deframentation SSDs are deliberately fragmented to prolong disk life. Each cell has a limited number of reads/writes (approximately 1 million) so data is deliberately spread to maximise the lifespan. Therefore defragmentation is discouraged!

I’m waiting for Sony to release their SZ5 notebook which is based on Intel’s Santa Rosa platform (marketed as Centrino Duo for consumers and Centrino Pro for enterprise).

Just a week after deciding it’s time to upgrade, my main PC develops a weird problem where the monitor will go to sleep while I’m using it, even when listening to music or watching a movie. The audio can still be heard when the monitor is in sleep mode.

First thing I did was to set all power management to ‘Always On’ and not to power down the monitor. Didn’t work. So I switched out the graphics card with a spare one I had. Didn’t work. I’ve monitored my PSU voltages, no spikes.

So while I wait patiently for the SZ5 to hit the streets I’m working off an old laptop my Dad has kindly lent me, which I use to remote desktop to my Windows machine.

Pastures new…

I am still alive but I’ve not really dedicated much time to blogging this year. Last Friday was my last day at Evolving Media. I enjoyed my time at EM, and they produce some quality work but I really want to move on to using more robust development practices. Namely using a versioning system again, when I first started there it felt a little bit like walking a tight rope without a safety net with no CVS.

I was also in denial about how much of an OO zealot I’ve become, the trouble is I’m not writing enough OO code to progress as quickly as I’d like. Not employing OO was basically a huge road block for starting test driven development, automated testing (continuous integration) and automated deployment. All of which are nice to have but come at the cost no one could afford at EM - time; victims of their own success in that regard.

As I’ve mentioned before, one thing I never really settled with was working on a Mac. It was doing my head in going to work on Mondays and hitting CTRL instead of the Apple key and pressing those retarded page up and down keys that aren’t (they only scroll your screen and not the cursor).

I’d have the reverse situation at home where I’d keep hitting the ALT key instead of CTRL in Windows, ALT + right for End, ALT + left for Home and @@ for “”. As developers we use # symbols more than most and ALT+3 just isn’t convenient dammit. Apple keyboards, pha!

I think a six month run on OSX was long enough for me to decide I’m still a Windows fanboy, there’s some dev tools for Windows I’ve grown up on. I never found a decent replacement for Regex Coach (I even made a long over due donation the other day as a thank you!).

So where am I off to next? On May 21st I start at Alexander Street Press, an academic publisher with US roots who focus on the humanities. I’m looking forward to it; the two guys I’m working with, Paul and John, seem really knowledgeable, I’m sure I’ll learn a lot.

I’ve a week to myself this week to tie up some loose ends (private work namely). I’m hoping to get some more posts up here this week. In an ideal world I wanted to:

• Push my new blog layout live (3 columns tagged up with microformat goodness)
• Make a start on Groovy in Action
• Read more of PHP in Action
• Ditto for Agile Web Development with Rails
• Finally get Zend (PHP5) certified

But I can’t see me squeezing that all in…

Interview with David Hussman on Agile Development

InfoQ has a decent interview with David Hussman on Agile Development, it’s 40 minutes but a worthwhile insight into Agile methods from a veteran.

I realise my posts have been few and far between this year but I’m slowing getting organised, I’ve actually got a bed to sleep in now, and a new job! (yes another one)

I had PHP in Action on pre-order with Amazon but it’s release date got pushed back so I signed up to the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) to get hold of the complete chapters early.

Fled the nest

This post is somewhat overdue since I’ve never been so busy. I don’t post much in the way of personal happenings on here but it’s not every month you move out of home.

It’s been a long time coming, and for years I swore to myself I’d always buy and never rent a property, but since no one really has any idea if house prices will keep going up or crash, I bit the bullet and moved into rented accommodation with a friend on March 1st!

It’s a nice feeling to have your own place, even if I don’t actually own it. Right now I can’t actually envisage getting the free time I had back. Hopefully in a month or two I’ll have sorted things out and got into some kind of routine.

I write this sitting on the floor at the end of my mattress while I wait for my new desk and bed to arrive (several weeks away, sigh).

I do have a couple of posts saved in drafts but I’ve spent more time washing up in recent weeks than I have on my PC. What time I do have I’m trying to spend revising for my Zend Certification which I’ve got to get around to taking, seeing as I paid for it last August!