News

This May, I attended my first international conference: PGCon 2014. Though the schedule spanned from May 20th to May 23rd, I came primarily for the talks. Then there was the Unconference on the 24th. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it was billed as a good way to network and find out what community members want from PostgreSQL. After attending the Unconference, I must admit I’m exceptionally glad it exists; it’s something I believe every strong Open Source project needs.

Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion my tastebuds are changing somewhat drastically. How so? As it turns out, where once I couldn’t even tolerate medium heat, and Taco Bell Medium sauce packets were the equivalent of agony, now all commonly available hot sauces only impart a mild zip.

Another free book giveaway? What, am I running a library here? Well, it turns out Packt liked my review of Instant PostgreSQL Starter so much, they want me host a short period where you can obtain your very own copy for the low, low price of $0.

It occurs to me I forgot to congratulate the winners of the free ebooks. So without further ado:

• SAB, who seems to host a nice blog geared toward server administration.
• Stephan, who’s looking to improve existing strategies.
• Jeff and his growing PostgreSQL cluster.
• Pierre, who apparently has an experimental PostgreSQL backend for MySQL. Interesting.

Congrats to the winners. But more, I call upon them to pay it forward by contributing to the community, either by corresponding with the excellent PostgreSQL mailing lists, or maybe submitting a patch or two to the code. There’s a lot of ground to cover, and more warm bodies always helps. :)

A little while ago, I wrote to the PostgreSQL general mailing list that I’d been approached by Packt Publishing to contribute a quick manual on doing PostgreSQL backups: Instant PostgreSQL Backup and Restore How-to. They’re the same guys who published Greg Smith’s PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance book which everyone seems to swear by.