First download the right MySQL installer .pkg from the MySQL site. This should mount as a disk image on the desktop. Double click and install the package, then double click the Mysql.prefpane and it will offer you two choices : Install for all users or install for current user. Select which you want then load up the terminal.

In the terminal type the following :

At this stage you close the terminal window and open a new one and do the following :

You should get some thing like “Welcome to MySQL” type thing at this point, that means it’s all fine and working. Type \q to quit the montior. Next we need to setup the root password for MySQL by doing the following:

Thats it you should be done, to control the system and add users check the documentation or you can use things like the MySQL administrator app or phpMyAdmin, there is plenty of bits out there.

Tested using Mac OS X 10.4.5 and MySQL 5.0.18

As most people know I love using computers (well macs) and find they help me learn loads of cool things an let me create all kinds of mad stuff. As my usage has increased and the amount of apps I use has increased I found my self running out of ram pretty fast. It may not sound like a big thing but you do notice it, the computer has to page memory to disk to create space in real memory for what you want to do and you notice a lag in performance switching apps and doing basic things. When I bought my PowerBook I knew that I would need more ram pretty soon, I got my PowerBook G4 with 512 megs of ram. At the time I wanted the 512 as a single stick of ram as the PowerBook has two ram slots I could then stick another 512 in later or even a gig of ram. Me being me and not wanting to wait I bought mine with 2×256 meg sticks, this creates a wastage cause when I needed to upgrade I had to dump a stick. I decided to go for it and bought a nice 1 gig stick to bring my total up to 1.25 gigs of ram. After the upgrade everything booted up fine and I didn’t notice it at first but everything is much much faster. Don’t get me wrong it not like a sudden breakneck speed boost but you can notice it, everything just feels smoother and everything runs on the spot and switches there and then.

Some of you might be thinking well why is all this so important? well the answer is simple, modern computers use virtual memory which simply means that when physical ram is used up it will take whatever isn’t being used and writes it to the harddrive. This is called paging and in unix styled OS’s the space used on the disk is called the swap space (swap from ram to disk). This sounds fair but harddrives aren’t very fast compared to memory so for example if you are writing a document and you put it to one side and the computer puts it’s memory to disk when you want to switch back to that document you get a lag (HD going nutts) as it reads that data back into ram and thats the lag. So if you have like 15 apps open and a bunch of docs then you see what I mean the lag is bigger. You could have the fastest machine in the world but with a lack of ram that machine will spend all it’s time paging to disk and would be pretty slow really.

Okay now time for a rant, my personal point of view about computers is that hardware has reached a point at present where the gains in new systems really is relatively small, it’s all down to the operating system. I have seen this even in older machines running mac os 10 for example 10.1 from 2001 running on a iBook from 2002 is slow by any standards, with the introduction of better optimization of code and more better compilers 10.2 was much faster on the same machine, the same for 10.3 it was faster still. Don’t get me wrong there are some other places where things are happening like the graphics card arena, a faster GPU can make a big difference and the more ram the better. I get fed up hearing that PC people have had a machine for about a year or two and it feels slow and poo, the reality of it normally is a lack of ram and a general build up of crap on their system that is slowing them down. A simple reinstall of the OS can do wonders. (The machine is as fast as it was when new)

I personally don’t feel that computers are throw away objects and the people that want every new revision of PowerBook etc are fools really or they are just bored and haven’t got anything else to spend their cash on. If you buy a good machine you can expect a good few years out of it, I expect to get at least 5 years out of a machine and I have without a problem. If you are in to games then you will need to upgrade more as the demands of the games increases more than most other types of software but again most of that is the GPU side of the machine.

So what am I saying in general?, well a little bit of ram goes a long way!. Give it a try you might be very surprised. Let me know how you get on.

(Like always, if you find any errors spelling problems etc.. let me know.)

Don’t you just hate getting spam especially from companies that you have explicitly told that you do not want to receive special offers and you also don’t want them to pass your details on to their third party corporate wally partners. It seems at the moment that they ignore these requests and tick the boxes afterwards, I have confirmed this a few times where I have started getting spam then gone to the website and find all the boxes ticked for some reason. At this point your stuffed as the boxes are ticked and your email address has been passed to the corporate fools and it’s now in the wild for all to send you shit.

I really wish that there was a complaints form for this kind of complete contempt for a site/companies users, saying this some companies are very good about this sort of stuff and they don’t try and get you every time you log in and do provide an easy way to unsubscribe from there bullshit emails.

You might be thinking why is he going on about all this?, well the reason is that I’m fed up with advertising and at the end of the day most spam is advertising some shit that you really don’t want. At the moment all this advertising is getting way out of hand, for example you want to watch a film on the TV every 10 minuets you get a string of adverts that ruin your attention to the film and make you want to chuck the TV out the window. So at this point we have got rid of the TV, you turn on your computer to check some mail and guess what you got?, Thats right a load of bullshit advertising spam. It’s everywhere on websites in the mail on the TV and mags just take the piss 50 to 60% adverts.

So why are they doing this? well the most obvious reason is because there are lots of dumb fuckers that fall for this kind of stuff, the dumb fucker cares more the latest in useless tat than he does about his bank account and sanity. In most cases the dumb fucker is so thick it’s hurting him, and due to this the advertisers know that sometimes it works so they keep on. Over time it will increase to the point where everyone feels like they have some mental illness due to the constant bombardment of bullshit. If I want something then I will actively seek out what I am looking for and at a reasonable price, I don’t need constant adverts trying to sell me crap, I don’t want to see some fucking footballer looking like a ponce with a phone it’s not gonna make me want to use or buy that product in fact it makes me feel the complete opposite (Shoot the footballer and smash the phone).

Not been up to much lately, here are some cool funnies for the more computer type people.

Steve Balmer – The Remix
This man runs Microsoft! This gives you an insight in to their stuff for sure

Bill Gate – Pie In The Face

Steve Jobs – The Death of PPC

Enjoy