Kevin: October 2004 Archives

Do you know how long it has been since I read a book written in first person? Long time. The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn was written from that perspective, and it was odd making the transition. Perhaps the good news was that Jordan McKel, the main character, had a Sherlock Holmes in the 21st century thing going on. Throw in an alien Watson, a space freighter, a mystery, and you've got a good book. Well, at least in my opinion you do.

Listening to Night Manager by John Le Carre was as good as it was short. To be honest, the reason I picked it up off of the shelf was that the audio was narrated by the author. Let me tell you: if the author liked the book he wrote and is any good at the voices of characters, you will enjoy the book twice as much as if it were narrated otherwise. Only an author can capture the mind's ear representing a character. Only an author knows (for sure) the inflections of written exchanges. Only this author has an interesting Brit twang to the reading. (not really the only one, I guess)

The book itself fits my interest; it is a spy novel with a touch of love. The English (instead of American English) writing is refreshing. The sayings are refreshing. Fish and chips is only the start.

Grab this audio book for a nice, 4-cassette diversion.

There are two things about me that not even my wife knows, until now: I learned the art of homebrew 'nix on FreeBSD with its ports collection and my favorite Linux distribution is Gentoo. Obviously the reason she didn't know that about me was that she wouldn't care to know those things, but that's beside the point. Caveat emptor.

Enter eBay auction 3045457980, a Cobalt Raq2. This is a 1U system that comes out of the box able to host web and email accounts. What it wouldn't do, however, was run a recent version of Perl easily. After much frustration I went in search of some other OS to put on it.

Over at The New York Times is a comparison of the candidates' logos by Paula Scher. The subtleties are interesting.

This is just a reminder to myself about listening to the 4th Quarter webcast of Apple's financials. Here are the links:

Conference call webcast

Apple's 8-K SEC Filing (via Level 12)
CUPERTINO, California�October 13, 2004�Apple� today announced financial results for its fiscal 2004 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2004. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $106 million, or $.26 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $44 million, or $.12 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $2.35 billion, up 37 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 27.0 percent, up from 26.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 37 percent of the quarter�s revenue.

The quarter�s results include an after-tax restructuring charge of $4 million. Excluding this charge, the Company�s net profit for the quarter would have been $110 million, or $.27 per diluted share.

Apple shipped 836,000 Macintosh� units and 2,016,000 iPods during the quarter, representing a 6 percent increase in CPU units and a 500 percent increase in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

As of today, I'm published! MySQL Basics for Visual Learners goes on sale today at Visibooks.com -- and by "on sale" I mean free to individuals, actually on sale to companies or organizations who would like to license it.

Here's the table of contents:

Getting Started
# Install MySQL on a Linux computer
# Start MySQL
# Create a new database
# Create a table
# Create a record
# Run a query

Administering Databases
# Restart MySQL
# Back up a database
# Delete a table
# Delete a database
# Restore a database

Working with Tables
# Alter tables
# Update records
# Delete records

Running Queries
# Sort query results
# Add query criteria

Securing a Database
# Add a local user
# Add a remote user
# Remove a user
# Restrict a user

Web-enabling Databases
# Perform a query using PERL
# Join two tables using PERL
# Create a CGI script
# Write a query in a CGI script

If you want an electronic copy you can visit the site and download the (5MB) PDF for free. If you think you might actually use it, how about instead of printing it out yourself you just buy a copy from Visibooks for $24.95. Either way, I hope you enjoy.

Thanks go to Jill and my family for giving me the time it took to write it and my brother Joe, among others, for help with proofing it.