Cassandra vs MongoDB vs CouchDB vs Redis vs Riak comparison :: KKovacs

Cassandra vs MongoDB vs CouchDB vs Redis vs Riak comparison :: KKovacs.

This is a great summary of a few major players in the NoSQL space.  It doesn’t go in to too much detail, but it’s pretty fair to each one.  I especially like the use cases he outlines for each.

Migrate MySQL to Homebrew MySQL

Think about what you are doing before you do this. Don’t be stupid.


> cp -R /usr/local/mysql/data /usr/local/var/mysql
> brew install mysql
> cp /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.1.51/com.mysql.mysqld.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
> launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mysql.mysqld.plist
**optional** > rm -rf /usr/local/mysql


Speakers | dConstruct 2010

Speakers | dConstruct 2010.

This was a fun presentation to listen to and I think Merlin makes some great points throughout.  I loved his comments about how nerds aren’t doing what they do for the money.  To paraphrase one portion:

If you give a painter a bunch of money to not paint any more they won’t be happy because they have money.  What makes them happy it to paint

This is spot on and describes well this idea that jobs that require creative thought generally can’t be done better by throwing money at it.  There are other things that you can give those “creatives” that can have a bigger impact.  I’m not saying that money isn’t important.  What I am saying is that there is a point at which more money isn’t doing anything good.  Pay enough to take the issue of money off the table.

If you can give the “creatives” autonomy and control to do what they think is best you’ll have happier developers and designers, and I guarantee happier customers to.

Merlin also talks about looking to the horizon and preparing yourself for what is coming next.  He encourages “nerds” to always keep looking ahead and try to avoid getting stuck the the rut of what you think is great right now.

Here’s what I see on my horizon:

Rails is great, but the time of server side is transitioning to client side.  This has been a while in coming but I believe that Javascript will be the primary language web developers are using and only secondarily their server side language of choice.  I’ve been eyeing this space for a while know and it’s only getting riper for the change.

If you are a math nerd start brushing up on your statistics and big data.  We’ve figured out how to collect huge sums of data, but only in the last few years have we really started understanding scalable and flexible ways to process that data out side of academia.  I’ve heard this elsewhere and I’ll echo it here: Statisticians will be driving the next generation of crazy cool apps.  It’s already starting especially around the twitter api, and it’s going to grow even more.

Fun times!!

Story Mapper by Carbon Five

Story Mapper by Carbon Five.

Very cool tool for organizing and manipulating a project on PivotalTracker.  I really wish it used oAuth or something, though.

A new kind of socially-biased search engine: Blekko

A new kind of socially-biased search engine: Blekko.

This idea of a simple query language that actually is geared towards normal people is interesting.  SQL was supposed to be that way back when, but no one today would ever claim that a search engine that exposed SQL to users would be better for the masses.  But a simpler version could have some really awesome broad impact in other areas.  As people become more comfortable using semi-structured queries we can use them in our own web apps without extensive education or making them “advanced features”.  I don’t know if Blekko can succeed, but if they can I think the web will benefit in some interesting ways.

The Data-Driven Life – NYTimes.com

The Data-Driven Life – NYTimes.com.

This sort of data collection and information extraction is becoming easier and more accessible.  I’ve personally used tools like RescueTime and TrackYouHappiness.org with some benefit.  I can see this becoming more prevalent and also the quality of information (as opposed to data) going up.  I’ve been trying to track my migraines and workouts, but don’t really know what I’m looking for and it is difficult to maintain.  One thing I love about tools like Kissmetrics is that they allow you to throw data at them and then build funnels after the fact with that data.  That sort of post processing seems ideal for life tracking like the article talks about.  Along the same line of reasoning, being able to combine multiple life streams that may individually include different pieces of data about you in to a single system would simplify collection as well.  If my Twitter stream, RescueTime log, Gowalla checkins, and happiness reports were all pulled in and correlated together I imagine I could get a much clearer picture of what things impact my mood and productivity.