New article about Shoal

I've written another article: this time about project Shoal. Juan Pedro Danculovic helped me out with it. Thanks to him.

Google Charts API

Another great toy from Mountain View, CA!. Google Charts API has born.
I like to call it Code As A Service (CAAS). Just a HTTP invocation with a few parameters are need to render beautiful charts.

http://chart.apis.google.com
/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:hW&chs=250x100&chl=Firefox|IE

Linux 2.6.24

New features of the kernel

IE8 announced, what a joke!

People are raging about the spectacular announce of IE8. I'm not an MS hater, but come on ! IE is the worst piece of software to come out of Redmond.

PostgreSQL partitioned index tip

Did you know PostgreSQL can make use of a partitioned index? That is an index with a WHERE clause. For example:
CREATE INDEX bigidx1 ON TABLE bigtable1 WHERE bigfield1 < 10000

That effectively creates a better index than a whole column index. The planner can check the WHERE clause of the SELECT and choose a smaller index. Smaller means faster :)

Use with caution and ALWAYS benchmark the new indexes. This type of index is truly useful when you have a good part of the column data (say 70%) with a unique value and the rest with a very disperse value set. And the table is very big, obviously.

Hope it helps.

Great tips for bloggers

Thanks Jon Mountjoy for your great advice on blogging! This is a must read for every blogger.

Who needs PhotoShop? Not me!

For those in need of a free replacement of PhotoShop, check out The Gimp. This is a free alternative, as powerful as PS and extremely flexible.