A few days ago, I came to the decision that I need to start doing more to support open source. My goal is to participate in a couple of open source projects that are important to me (GeoServer and Habari). More specifically, I plan to submit code, bugs, and/or documentation during 2011. Another goal of the effort is to document much of the endeavor for each project. To that end, here are my thoughts for selecting projects and getting started.

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Table partitioning in PostgreSQL is a great way to speed up queries that require particular portions of very large data sets. The standard example is business intelligence reporting. Lots of data goes into the database, but generally your queries only work with one month’s data. As the data set grows, you want to avoid the indefinite lengthening of your query times for reporting. By using table partitioning and PostgreSQL’s constraint_exclusion, you can be sure that your queries are only scanning the data that is appropriate.

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My usual geo-spatial stack includes CentOS, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Apache HTTP Server, Apache Tomcat, GeoServer, and a front-end that uses OpenLayers, possibly with GeoExt and/or Google Web Toolkit. While this is not terribly complex to configure, it can be a daunting for task for individuals looking to get started. There are few good resources for getting parts of this configuration together, but I have not found a good collection from the ground up, so I thought I would give it a go. I hardcoded a lot of filenames, you should usually check the download directory to be sure you are grabbing the latest stable packages.

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Another year almost gone, and in some ways, I’m not sure I have much to show for it. I have traversed light years in my internet travels, read about all sorts of strange and interesting people, and paid reasonably close attention to much of what has happened in open source, web development trends, light linux administration, new gadgets, you get the picture. I do not have a lot to show for all of this reading and watching. I can talk up a storm about technologies. I can spout absurd amounts of random facts about shit that does not matter, and I’m probably the guy you want at your table for trivia night, but I still feel as though I am missing ‘it’.

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UPDATE - The replacement battery did not fix my device power down issues. Since it is still under warranty, I get a replacement device (refurbished) at no cost. I get to keep the replacement battery. I can’t help assuming that my ‘refurbished’ device will be a Captivate that someone else returned because it was powering down.

So my Captivate is still powering down. I want to document a little bit more of my trials, hopefully this will save some other frustrated Captivate owners a little hassle.

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