I needed a rest from my opening keynote review NY Tech 1995-2008. Opening Web 2.0 Expo NY Keynote but a few siginificant points from The Death of the Grand Gesture by Deb Schultz.
Web 2.0 Expo NY keynotes are happening today. Technology in use included CrowdVine which I’d not heard of, and plenty of Twitter feeds such as w2e_NY08.
The opening keynote was Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures with his presentation New York’s Web Industry From 1995 to 2008: From Nascent to Ascendent .
Some stats, Seed and early stage deals.
Fred first asked “New York is not an alley. Call it Broadway, or just New York.”
Here is a summary of his history of New York Web Industry.
New York is now 1/3 of Silicon valley, compared to 1/8 of funded Internet companies.
One thing mentioned is a documentary called “We live in Public”. Some of the footage from 1999, is so early Big Brother.
I will be attending next week’s Web 2.0 Expo 2008 in New York.
Garys Guide has a schedule of the key events and off site associated event parties.
It will be a bit of a change from the typical MySQL Conferences and recent OSCON Conference I have attended this year.
The Keynote titles gives you an indication of the variety of talks expected.
Before I get to post my OSCON reflection I see I didn’t post this (which I reference).
At OSCON opening keynotes Tim O’Reilly Interviews Monty Widenius & Brian Aker. This provided some interesting answers in a Q & A session. Here is some of the discussion.
TO: So 6 months in. How is it with Sun?
BA: Really rewarding environment. My first question was? You are going to send me free H/W. No H/W has been delivered yet, or access to the masses, still hoping. Sun is a very engineering driven company.
MW. Thanks God we didn’t go public. Starting to do closed sourced components, going public this would have continued.
TO: Sun saved MySQL from public market/ insulated from market.
MW: 6 months in, Sun still trying to figure out what they bought. Sun has made a commitment to open source throughout the organization. Engineers who have been working in closed environments, now seeing this all in public, and opens yourself up to more inputs and exposure.
TO: You have your own projects within sun, how does that affect with the main line of development of MySQL, Monty you with the Maria Storage Engine, Brian you with Drizzle.
TO: What is the Support like in Sun?
BA: My boss got it. We are looking at going after different market area, niche and ecosystem. There is certain direction the main codebase is heading such as enterprise features, oracle like replacements. There is a core set of environments what they aren’t needed. Additional new requirements like a proximity data storage, historically Postgres has been good for this type of GIS data. This is a new type of data store. location/time and proximity of objects.
Sun has given us more free hands to work for best features of MySQL. For Drizzle, to strip it down into more components architecture and extensibility. It’s a micro-kernel there will be an interface for large parts of the code.
TO: What do you think about Google?
BA: Happy opening up more of their data, and trying to turn the world into their own 20% of time project.
TO: What do you think about Amazon?
BA: Interesting position, secretive company. At the beginning how little anybody though of Amazon in a service marketplace.
TO : What do you think about Microsoft?
MW: less and less things are good.
BA: Irrelevant.
TO: What do you think about Apple?
NW: More afraid of Apple then Microsoft
BA: Really want an iPhone, but hoping Google will get Android out and it works.
TO: What are the cool things MySQL can do on the Sun field, and reverse?
BA: Both Sun and MySQL Engineers thought about open source differently. MySQL has created a set of steps of evolution, e.g. employees contributing to open source projects. MySQL’s DNA was very small, it’s interesting how fast this is influencing Sun’s approach
MW: MySQL has become to management driven in previous years, Sun has enabled us to get back to our roots.
The following Lua scripts are the examples are from my MySQL Proxy @ OSCON 08 presentation.
Requires MySQL Proxy Logging Module.
What is released is the Version for MySQL 5.0. A generic version for all MySQL versions is not yet released.
This script is part of the standard MySQL Proxy examples.
Additional Lua scripts from MySQL forge are available here.
Today I presented with Giuseppe Maxia of Sun Microsystems Inc at OSCON 08 on “MySQL Proxy: From Architecture to Implementation”. I was surprised to find that MySQL has a strong showing with a number of presentations this week.
Our talk covered the basics of MySQL Proxy, what’s coming in future features, and a number of examples of how I have used Proxy in consulting engagements to improve the information retrieval particularly for identifying performance problems.
Between the keynotes, general sessions, BoFs that are plenty of events at OSCON 08.
Last night in the BoF time, a selected few enjoyed the relaxed music mode of the Good Company Soul and Blues Review. You can find my photos of what I’ve deemed the O’Reilly Band here.
Lacking the offers of free beer and activities of the larger events, may missed out on knowing about a great time, it was most enjoyable and relaxing. I think they should warm up for the keynotes in future, but then who would run all the AV!
The lights were rather bright, so grayscale actually helped out, so I’ve got a mixture of color and black and white.
This morning at OSCON 08, Tim O’Reilly’s opening keynote Open Source on the O’Reilly Radar included a slide on Drizzle, giving this new project maximum exposure to the Open Source community.
Drizzle was only officially announced yesterday in Drizzle, Clouds, “What If?” by primary architect Brian Aker. Things move fast. There has been a number of comments from people yesterday including Mark Attwood, Monty Widenus,Monty Taylor,Ronald Bradford, Arjen Lentz, Lewis Cunningham, Jeremy Cole, 451 Group,Matt Asay, Assaf Arkin, SlashDot, Builder.au and MySQL HA.
The Drizzle Launchpad project has reached 5th on a Google Search.
Unfortunately, not all uptake and feedback was positive. The official Wikipedia page for Drizzle was marked for speedy deletion almost instantly, and within a few hours permanently deleted.
Within the present MySQL ecosystem, there are limited options for dedicated MySQL Consulting in the US. Outside of the official Sun/MySQL Consulting, Percona and Proven Scaling both based in Silicon valley are the only options generally known and accepted by the MySQL Community.
There is now an east coast option based in New York, and that is Ronald Bradford. Providing expert MySQL Consulting in Architecture, Performance, Scalability, Migration and Knowledge Transfer.
With two decades working in the IT industry, Ronald is well qualified in MySQL having previously provided consulting services for MySQL Inc combining 9 years experience with the product. His consulting experience is not limited to MySQL, having also worked extensively with Oracle, and previously with Ingres. More details of this experience is available at Linked In
This week you will find him on the west coast. If your at OSCON 2008, then please track me down. You can use my Contact Form, email [me] at [this domain], ping me on Twitter, track me on irc://irc.freenode.net (~arabxptyltd) or drop in to my OSCON session at 2:35pm Thursday.
I will be heading to my first OSCON next week where I will be presenting MySQL Proxy: from Architecture to Implementation in conjunction with Giuseppe Maxia .
As was written by Colin Charles Our booth is yours… Sun at OSCON, Sun/MySQL would appear to also have a reasonable turnout. So it will be good to see some old colleagues and friends, and hopefully meet some new contacts.
While I am based on the East Coast, I do also provide expert MySQL consulting for clients in any location. Should you like to find out more about my offerings covering Architecture, Performance, Scaling, Migration and Knowledge Transfer for MySQL Solutions, please Contact Me and I will arrange a time to meet next week.
April 25th, 2008 – by Ronald Bradford
Welcome to the 94th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of the database blogsphere. Adding to the list of usual database suspects, I have some more alternative considerations for our readers this week.
We start with Conferences
Still some discussion from last weeks’ 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo.
Baron “xarpb” Schwartz calls it correct in Like it or not, it is the MySQL Conference and Expo. Matt Assay of c|net gives us some of his opinions in three posts Two great posts on MySQL, Back to the future for MySQL and Between two consenting corporations… in followup to last week’s active slashdot discussion. Many others have also commented if you have not been following the news released before opening keynotes.
If you didn’t get a hard copy, Sheeri Kritzer Cabral has published the Pythian EXPLAIN Cheatsheet many attendees received.
Also last week was Collaborate 08 – Technology and Applications IOUG forum for the Oracle Community.
This week we also see the Web 2.0 San Francisco in action, and excitement is also brewing for the PGCon – PostgreSQL Conference for Users and Developers happening in under a month as Robert Treat has Plane tickets booked for PGCon. Postgres was also visible at the MySQL Conference & Expo if you were looking with a prominent consulting team downing the blue elephant during the event. Wish I’d taken a photo now!
Still more news from Adam Machanic of the Pythian group with SQLTeach Toronto: Almost Here.
Common threads
The 2008 Google Summer of Code announced this week showcases the Open Source databases MySQL (14 projects) and PostgreSQL (6 projects). Kaj Arnö talks more in Fourteen Summer of Code projects accepted 2008. The company PrimeBase Technologies also features strongly with two projects for the Blob Streaming storage engine for MySQL as I detail in Media Blob Streaming getting a Google boost.
MySQL
DTrace Integration with MySQL 5.0 – Chime demo in MySQL Users Conference 2008 by Jenny Chen is an example of Sun’s Open Source contribution to MySQL which I saw as a physical demo last week. Unfortunately, due to the imbalance in actually getting new functionality into Community contributions (actually non existence in current or next mysql version :-(), this functionality is only really for show. Dtrace with MySQL 6.0.5 – on a Mac describes some of this work actually making it into the next, next version. It seems this next Falcon Preview is available but not announced by MySQL generally as I note in Continued confusion in MySQL/Sun release policy.
MySQL Gurus Mark Callaghan and Brian Aker comment respectively here and here on MySQL Heap (Memory) Engine – Dynamic Row Format Support. Work submitted by Igor Chernyshev of eBay Kernel Team (whom I’ve met previously and was most impressed with his ability to submit MySQL patch work, with little previous MySQL kernel knowledge, but extensive C++ knowledge). This work also contributed to eBay Wins Application of the Year at MySQL Conference & Expo.
Mark also mentions in his post “How do users get it? There is no community branch into which people can submit changes with a GPL license.“. A topic your’s truly has also mentioned regarding the Community contributions, development and release. Perhaps a sign of more benefit to the community soon as Monty mentions.
Baron Schwartz comments on Keith “a.k.a Kevin” Murphy’s work in Spring 2008 issue of MySQL Magazine. With a quick plug also for his upcoming book “High Performance MySQL – Version 2″ (me giving it a plug also now), Baron also has the best published anti-spam sniffer email I’ve seen, and recently updated to his new employer. Check his blog and let me know.
Postgres
Joshus Drake of Command Prompt Inc. The Postgres Company gets excited in Is that performance I smell? Ext2 vs Ext3 on 50 spindles, testing for PostgreSQL and gives us some insight into different settings of two popular file system types. It would be great to see a follow up with a few more different filesystems types.
Pabloj “so many trails … so little time” extends his MySQL example to Postgres in Loading data from files. And on Postgres Online Journal, we get An Almost Idiot’s Guide to PostgreSQL YUM giving you a step by step guide of PostgreSQL setup, including the all important “Backing up Old Version”.
Oracle
We get a detailed book chapter from Keith Lake of Oracle OLAP The most powerful, open Analytic Engine in his extensive post on Tuning Guidance for OLAP 10g. David Litchfield brings attention in A New Class of Vulnerability in Oracle: Lateral SQL Injection. The title is sufficient for all Oracle DBA’s to review.
Don Seiler gives his experience in Bind Variables and Parallel Queries Do Not Mix when an Oracle Bug is discovered the database to 64-bit H/W..
Matching LOB Indexes and Segments by Michael McLaughlin gives us a good CASE/REGEX SQL example exam question, and simple output to monitor the growth of LOBs in your Oracle database.
Additional readings for Oracle folks can be found with Kenneth Downs writing Advanced Table Design: Resolutions and Dan Norris’ Collaborate 08 thoughts gives a concise review of a largely attended Oracle event.
SQL Server
B Esakkiappan’s SQL Thoughts gives us a throughout lesson on SQL Server 2005 Database Transaction logs with Know the Transaction LOG – Part – 1, Part – 2, Part – 3 and Part -4 Restoring Data.
Paul S. Randal of SQL Skills adds Conference Questions Pot-Pourri: How to create Agent alerts to his writings following many requests after a recent workshop.
In Scalability features I would like to have in SQL Server Michael Zilberstein lists 3 key features including “Active-Active cluster”, “Indexes per partition” and “Bitmap indexes and function based indexes”.
Ingres, Times Ten, Google App Engine and more
Some movement in the Ingres world with Deb Woods of Ingres Technology Blog discussing in Inside the Community – Ingres style…. the Ingres Engineering Summit occurring this week. Attendees included newbies to a 24 year Ingres veteran. That beats my experience in Ingres which now extends 19 years.
We get another very detailed installation description, this time for Times Ten in Install Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database 7.0.4 on Linux.
Just a few weeks ago, a new database offering hit the market with the Google App Engine. News this week includes
Google App Engine Hack-a-thons! being announced with events in New York on May 7th and San Francisco on May 16th. As a developer with an account and an excuse to use it more, I can’t win, being in the right towns on the wrong dates.
OakLeaf Systems this week writes Comparing Google App Engine, Amazon SimpleDB and Microsoft SQL Server Data Services. Another good read just for comparison.
Not in a blog, but in discussion in at the recent MySQL, was msql. It was interesting to find out that PHP was originally developed for msql first, and only used MySQL as the preferred database after some functionality requirement. Interesting what could have been?
In Conclusion
Thanks Dave for the opportunity to contribute to the week in review. Until my chance to charm the readers next time.
I leave you with a photo, and challenge our readers to find another person who would be capable of wearing a t-shirt that states “My free software runs your company”. Michael Widenius- Founder and original developer of MySQL can, and my thanks to you for MySQL, and the Vodka shots at the Conference last week.
I was prompted following a few key words by Marten Mickos at the Sun Dinner on Wednesday evening, and subsequent one on one discussion with Marten, to post my thoughts of some significant news this week announced at the MySQL Conference. The decision to provide as it’s been termed is “Enterprise only features”. It is unfortunate this was not discussed in Marten’s opening keynote, having been exposed the evening before in the Partner’s meeting and hitting the blog sphere before the conference officially started.
MySQL, past, present and future as an Open Source company requires a functional business model to succeed. This includes the funding of resources and the technology progression. It is also necessary in this business climate to build a successful business quickly. How do you do this? Well that’s probably the difference between a successful CEO and an unsuccessful one, and what Marten Mickos has produced is clearly very successful.
I may not necessarily agree with the decisions made, more specifically not understanding at this time the rationale of which features are free and which are likely to be commercial, but I respect the decision made by Marten Mickos. These new feature considerations are in a future release of MySQL, they are also I’m sure not yet set in stone, however MySQL can not be all things to all people, no software can. It reminds me of the Homer Simpson car, designed to do everything Homer wanted in a car, but it bankrupted the previously successful company due the views of one individual to solve all their own needs, but not the needs of the majority. Who is affected by this decision, who will benefit, again it’s too early to tell.
Monty indicates this is a MySQL decision, not a Sun decision. This indicates the transition of MySQL to being under the Sun banner of the largest open source company is well, still in transition. Today it was again confirmed to me, that the MySQL database will always be GPL and MySQL will not never revoke the functionality that powers the world’s largest websites as free software for the database server.
As an advocate for the MySQL community, I’d like to consider myself one of the pulses, a thought in the MySQL conscious and even a vocal lobbyist. I am however not interested in being a disruptor in the MySQL ecosystem. A Communications Lesson on Slashdot I believe correctly states “Sun to Begin Close Sourcing MySQL.” The headline is wrong.
A number of people have posted their comments, let’s stop bickering about it, and let’s see something positive happen for the benefit of the community. For example, as I’ve mentioned previously regarding the lack of differentiation for the Community version, again mentioned by Mark Callaghan in A better (community) HEAP engine where a worthwhile patch can’t be of benefit to the community in a binary release for the lay person.
When in management, I am responsible for contributing to the success of the company, to play a significant role in the functional business model, to ensure funding for resources and technology progression. In other terms, how can revenue generation be achieved to fund prominently salaries of staff, including my own. How am I going to do this? This will be the difference between my huge success or not.
Jay’s opening lines regarding the final MySQL Conference keynote speaker was: “I work with a lot of data. I think peta-bytes, maybe exa-bytes”. This was relating to Jacek Becla from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, giving his presentation on “The Science and Fiction of Petascale Analytics”.
The goal of the Large Synoptics Survey Telescope (LSST) is the storage of 50+ PB of images and 20+ PB data.
Let’s just clarify the size. 20 PB of data = 20 years of HD Movies = 2000 years of 128kb MP3
The next database frontier is obviously building huge databases. What part will MySQL or other relational databases play? Some interesting facts were.
The Operational plan for LSST Project Timeline is 10 years, only starting in 2014. The timeline:
The primary goals are: Scale, parallelize, fault tolerant.
The slides from my 2008 MySQL Conference Presentation can be downloaded from here.
A: Maria, an ACID, MVCC engine that plans to be the default non-transactional and default transactional engine for MySQL.
Presently development with a team of 6 people and plans of adding 2-3 developers the work on Maria should see the 1.5 release this month.
It was great to here Monty say “We have a policy of zero MySQL Bugs, like the old MySQL way.”
Maria Version History
1.0 – “Crash Safe” — part of a existing 5.1 branch
1.5 – “Concurrent insert/select” to be merged as part of formal MySQL 6.0 release
2.0 – Transactional and ACID
3.0 – High Concurrency & Online Backup
4.0 – Data Warehousing
The schedule has all of the features to be available for the next MySQL Conference Q2 2009
Some points of note:
What would be great if people could create a single line (one tip) from each talk and we could aggregate these for an executive summary for tech people.
This was prompted from only a few minutes looking in on Baron Shwartz’s EXPLAIN presentation. What I didn’t know was.
EXPLAIN EXTENDED SELECT …; SHOW WARNINGS; gives the rewritten SQL query
If only I had time to whip out an application on my Google AppEngine and get twitter feeds with say a mysqlconf keyword. Perhaps we need a all night BoF hackfest to do it.
A small but committed group met at 8:30pm to hear more about our the plans from PrimeBase Technologies here at the 2008 MySQL Conference. Our discussion started in true MySQL form.
Monty Widenius presents to the group plastic cups and a bottle of Absolut Vodka.
After a shot, Paul starts with “While I can still talk”.
Monty, slams another bottle of Vodka on the table.
We all laugh.
Paul outlined some of the roadmap plans from existing the Alpha release to Beta releases.
He talked about the plans for Synchronous Replication and there was active discussion on various use cases.
There was also discussion and input on Solid State Drive (SDD) Technology which will be tested with PBXT in the coming months.
The 20 second summary from the Scaling MySQL – Up or Out? from our panel of experts at 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo.
Also in the MySQL Press Releases today but dated for tomorrow is Sun Microsystems Announces MySQL 5.1.
I find the wording clearly a new language from my previous understanding — “pending general availability of MySQL™ 5.1″.
We now see the trademark notice, obviously a Sun influence.
We now have a “pending” GA version. MySQL is obviously very keen to release MySQL 5.1 for GA. This was expected at last years’ MySQL conference. Many in the past year have expected this prior to this year’s conference (we are now being informed late Q2 2008). There was an anticipation there would be two RC versions, this is now the third. So what exactly does “pending” mean? Will 5.1.24 be renamed Production if it passes community acceptance (I say community because it’s not an Enterprise release). This would be a change from previous naming policy. What’s most likely is hopefully they release 5.1.25 as production. Comes back then to why the words “pending general availability”, and not “next release candidate” which is what it is.
Previously MySQL also made new with the initial RC status of 5.1, moving away from the previously policy.
At Day 1 of the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo today, our high numbers of attendees (reported at 2,000) have resulted in Standing Room only in a lot of talks. This has got to be excellent PR.
I got to sit in on the Memcached and MySQL session by Brian Aker and at the end I stuck my head in to Best Practices for Database Administrators by and Explain demystified by Baron Schwartz both 2008 MySQL Award winners.
All full to overfilling presentations.
In today’s Official MySQL Press Release, PrimeBase XT (PBXT) has been named along with three other storage engine partners in “Sun Celebrates Third-Party MySQL Storage Engines“.
This a great achievement for a small company to be recognized in the certified storage engine partner program, in comparison to the other companies that are much larger on the balance sheet. This continues the news with last week you may have read PrimeBase Technologies a MySQL Platinum Level Partner.
A noted absence from the list is Nitro, an expected absence was Solid.
Marten has opened the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo. This time he started in his opening comments “I have more to say to more people, and given less time to say it”.
His answer to why Sun bought MySQL included slides showing “Alignment in Culture and Vision” and “What’s in it for you – Performance & Scale, Support, Marketplace”.
This year the MySQL Conference has over 2,000 people and 55 exhibitors.
What was funny, was the photo showing the burning of the IPO Prospectus. Marten mentioned now with many Sun lawyers he has to be more careful what to day. I actually have an interesting extension to this at Watching what you say
Some points of note for me:
Following Marten Mickos, the second opening keynote at the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo was by Jonathan Schwartz CEO and President of Sun Microsystems. Blog
His opening joke was about dinner with Marten, to which Marten said “You not going to get a keynote, unless you buy the company.”
So what was striking for me in his presentation “What is Sun’s Agenda?”
I had a chance to meet Jonathan and Rich Green on Sunday night, and it was great to see Jonathan learning about, and getting behind the product PBXT – The Community Engine a MySQL 5.1 open source engine.
Announced this morning is this year’s MySQL award winners.
2008 MySQL Application of the Year
2008 MySQL Partner of the Year
2008 MySQL Community Member of the Year
Marten has opened the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo this morning in Santa Clara.
What was funny in the early slides was the photo showing the burning of the IPO Prospectus. Marten mentioned now with many Sun lawyers in the audience he has to be more careful what to say.
This morning while coming down for breakfast, a Sun employee entered the lift. I introduced myself, and he indicated he knew me by name. When I asked what department he was in, he said “legal”. Being intrigued as to who he knew me, I’d discovered he has read my emails and blog posts.
I must admit I’ve met a number of new people this week and the first word has been “Oh!”, as in they have heard of my name previously.
These have been unexpected responses and information for me, I’m not normally surprised like this. I’ll not be changing what I say, and how I say it, professionally my writing and publishing will continue to embody “Opinions, Expertise, Passion”.
I got my registration for Google App Engine this morning after being Waitlisted previously.
Between flying for about 15 hrs tomorrow and then the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo where I’m presenting and running an Exhibitors booth, fat chance I’ll get to look into this much over the next week.
Pity!
I forgot to mention in Support the MySQL Community Photo Day that PrimeBase Technologies is providing 3 prizes for the best photos uploaded.
| First Prize | $150 Amazon Gift Voucher |
| Second Prize | $100 Amazon Gift Voucher |
| Third Prize | $50 Amazon Gift Voucher |
So, take your photo with other community supporters — they’ll also be wearing their open source t-shirts. You can upload photos to www.flickr.com/groups/mysqlcommunityphotoday.
Well at least your MySQL database world.
As Paul eluded to, PrimeBase Technologies has a project to provide synchronous replication for MySQL in a High Availability environment. It is more then an idea, there is a plan.
Is it possible?
What are the use cases?
How can you use it?
Would you use it?
Some input to date. We need these questions and more, and we seeking more input for discussion.
Unfortunately the opportunity to hear any input during a presentation is left to the last day of the conference, so there has been created a BoF session on Tuesday night for a round table discussion if necessary. People are encouraged to bring specific cases and situations for feedback, the reasons why MySQL Replication, MySQL Cluster, DRBD/HeatBeat or any other solution does not satisfy your needs, and what would.
If you can’t wait you may need to seek out Booth #518, and make a time to seek out the Technology Expert.
Just today, Peter Zaitsev of MySQL Performance Blog also writes in State of MySQL Market and will Replication live ?, “Customers are constantly asking me if there is something which would help them to scale MySQL and get some HA out of the box even on the medium level. Seriously – MySQL Cluster, Continuent, Master-Master Replication, DRBD or SAN based HA architectures all have their limits which makes neither of them used for very wide class of applications.” to confirm this pursuit.
Updated On good advice from Sheeri I made a few comments clearer.
It has been proposed that the integral “MySQL Community Photo Day” be on Thursday April 17 2008, the final day of the MySQL Users Conference.
Wear a t-shirt from an open source community project on Thursday, whether a PrimeBase PBXT one or your favorite open source project. Get your photo taken with the masses of community supporters. If your not attending this year, this doesn’t mean you can’t also contribute a photo yourself from what location you are from. Save a saving fund for next year but get us a photo.
It doesn’t have to just be Thursday, photos will be accepted at any time before then. Upload a photo and win a prize. (Baron you definitely get chocolate)
Their is a Flickr group called “MySQL Community Photo Day” at http://www.flickr.com/groups/mysqlcommunityphotoday
This is a chance for you to support the community. There is already a small band of supporters before my post already including Colin C, Paul M, Lenz G, Baron S, Sheeri K.
