Database War Stories

There's an interesting series of posts over at O'Reilly Radar. Tim O'Reilly asked people how they were using databases in their "Web 2.0" applications (although I think the Web 2.0 part of it is for the most part irrelevant). The responses so far have made for interesting reading. So far we've heard from Second Life, Bloglines and Memeorandum, Flickr, NASA World Wind, and craigslist. One of the lessons learned is that with a high-traffic site, at some point you have to break your database up so that the "hot" data is spread across a number of boxes. This got me thinking. It should be possible to build a tool that analyzes your database usage and, given a number of slave boxes to configure as it sees fit, automatically configures masters and slaves and distributes your data across those boxes as necessary. This would not be a one-time only process either; it would continue to monitor usage and performance and adjust accordingly. Certainly not an easy task, but should be doable.

Bad UI in iTunes

I use iTunes both on a Mac and Windows. In OS X, Command-H hides an app, something I do so often I just do it without thinking. However, in iTunes on Windows, Control-H (aka backspace) deletes whatever object you're on, with no undo. I just deleted a playlist I had spent a long time working on and I see no way to get it back.

Why don't I at least have the option to undo? Terrible UI. Surprising that Apple of all companies made such a basic mistake.

Windows #2

Windows #2

Originally uploaded by bgreenlee.

Just discovered that you can blog your photos directly from Flickr, so I thought I'd test it out. Gives me an excuse to post something anyway...it's been way too long.

This is a photo of a building along the Embarcadero in San Francisco. I put up another shot from a different angle as I couldn't decide which I liked better. This one probably, but let me know what you think.