Yesterday I attended a MySQL web Seminar about Performance Tuning.

They covered guidelines and best practices in the following areas:

• Benchmarking and Profiling Concepts and Guidelines
• Schema Optimization
• Index Selection and Tuning
• SQL Coding Techniques
• Server Parameter Tuning Guidelines

One of the things I enjoyed is that the mySql guys are following the web 2.0 movement, so they explain techniques to tune up the database to host big tables with a lot of users and how to increase performance fine tunning the queries.
The host was Jay Pipes and I enjoyed the interview very much. The only issue was that I had to call a toll free number, because the audio goes by phone, and the quality plus the bad phone made it really hard to follow. In one of the Q & A comments someone mentioned voipbuster.com and next time I’m going to call from there.

Download a PDF resume of the best practices.

This days I’ve been thinking about making some interview series to a group of designers that are related to the web, in total 10 designers most of them from Mallorca, right now having a board:

1. Santiago Tonelli - Mokuto Concept
2. Pancho Pérez - Diseñador freelance (Hecha)
3. Susana Gispert - Atipika
4. Waldo Verdejo - Quantum - Diseñador freelance
5. Jesuke - ex At4 ahora trabajando en BCN
6. Mariana Murabito - blondebeyond
7. Pier Bover - Jefe creativos @ BehindThePixel
8. Gabriel - Diseñador 3D madrid
9. Kique - Diseñador 3D ,Parc Bit (si quiere)
10. To be confirmed : Raquel, web: 3bajocero.com/ agency: planeta-web
11. To be confirmed : Could be Razmi Patel from conectado.biz

Well the idea is to make an interview in about 20 minutes, relaxed ambiend, some good coffees, the laptop always conected with a Vodafone USB and some parts saved in video, pictures, etc. I will take over all the post-edition job and publishing. There is no deadline or rush since I’m doing this in my free time.

First interview has been done to Pancho Pérez and it’s already online.
If you like the idea and want to be part of it put a comment in this blog entry with a link to your personal website or portfolio.
On a side comment about the web agencies and their own websites, except some good exceptions, is that they violate some basic usability guidelines systematically. One of them is NOT to use flash intro, nor to put music at the homepage. This about sounds is basic since the user can decide to use his PC to listen music or he can be talking in Skype and he must not be interrupted in any of this tasks without permission.
Like a user I feel very disturbed when some of this happens while I’m talking to a partner via Skype and usually I don’t enter in that web again.
Another thing is the navigation made totally in Flash, so any of it’s content will be indexed by Google, and some others with the same Flash but worst because the menu opens popups so you can’t view anything of their portfolio. Modern Web browsers came all with pop-up blockers. Have you noticed that ?

This kind of things, at the actual web evolution and at the end of 2007, make the overall web quality worst. And it’s sad that some recognized agencies still follow this path and don’t update their websites with content readable portfolios where you can feel their works. Not only for their client works, but also for their own webs, it would be ideal that they put hands at work to fix these basic things. If they do not that they are giving at the start, on their very own website, an erroneous idea of what’s quality content on the internet.

• 2 rolls of double-sided tape (About 7 € each)
• 6 to 8 cotton bags from your local supermarket.
• A ruler (if possible a 50 cm one).
• A cutter.
• A good pair of scissors.
• Foscurit. Foscurit is a gray plastic that does not let in any light (nor any wind)
• Spray paint. If it matchs the color of your window a lot better!
  OPTIONAL and only for Freaks: Plastic L’s . This is at the end to insulate the angles.

Good, now that you have all the materials you can put Hands At Work:

1. Cut the cotton in 2 cm vertical lines. Like you can see in this picture:
   
2. Put it inside the window horizontal holes
3. Mount it with the spray painting. From the 2 sides being the most important one the outside one (that where humidity and wind will get inside)
4. Fix the double-sided tipe on the window borders. This will be later used to mount the plastic foscurit:
   
5. Stick the foscurit over the double-sided tape.
6. The final touch. Touche! If you are a detail freak and you want even more insulation get some L plastic corners (you can get these in Leroy Merlin, I will ask them for comission later…) . You can stick those with silicon in the top and the bottom side of the window with the window closed.

Another video about insulating a window. Mine is much better insulation because reduces a lot more the noise!

Finally I’ve found my perfect match:

Still waiting that someone posts one of these in Ebay spain to see what is it’s price in the black market.

In this post I will comment about “new inventions” and sort of things that I received lately in my inbox.

#1 Amazon re-invents the book

This is just way too much hyped for me. I guess I’m one of those “old school guys” that still prefer the wooden pencil and those books that can be touched, opened, smelled…
But Oh yeah, I can imagine that this would be great for that obscure toilet undergrounds, or for reading in an airplane where there is not enough room to carry the whole 007 book series. Here Eduardo from alt1040 explains why he thinks Amazon Kindle will not gonna work. (spanish)

More at Amazon

#2 Sony with their “smile detector” camera

The new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T200 has face-recognition technology and fires the shutter when all the people in the photo smiles.

Cool, isn’t it ?