Month: September 2014

A judge’s ruling in the 2010 Gulf oil spill could have widespread consequences.
via National Geographic News
Q&A: What Federal Ruling Against BP Means for Oil Drilling’s Future

If you’re like me, bugs creeping and crawling all over your home is a big no thank you. With some preventative procedures and DIY methods you can keep them out of your house without using any harsh chemicals.

As with most problems, prevention is key. This informative graphic from supplier Part Select covers the best steps toward bug prevention, natural bug killing sprays, natural repellents for specific insects, and even plants you can grow around your home that will detract creepy crawlies away. There are plenty of ways to take care of pest problems—whether it’s during the heat of summer time or the deep freeze of winter—so be sure to research what measures you should take for your specific bug nuisance.

D.I.Y. Pest Control | Part Select via Visual.ly

via Lifehacker
Keep Your Home Bug Free with These DIY Pest Control Methods

If you want to display a range of data by region, you need a GeoMap. You may not have known this, but it’s quite easy to create your own in Google Sheets after entering your data.

Highlight the data and go to Insert > Charts. On the charts tab of the new window you can select maps and choose which type of map you want. On the customize tab you can choose the colors and select which region you want. I created a map for the U.S., but you can choose to create a map for the world instead, or a select number of other regions.

6 Powerful Google Drive Features You’re Probably Not Using | PC World

via Lifehacker
Create Customizable GeoMaps with Google Sheets

Upgrading RAM is such an easy affair that most of us just do it on our own. Chances are, if you’re on a Mac, you’re also upgrading your RAM from third-party suppliers. MacIssues points out that if you’re adding RAM from someone other than Apple, it’s worth holding onto it for a bit.

The reasoning here is pretty simple: Apple’s warranty is horrible in regards to RAM:

Apple will only provide warranty service on systems with original Apple-provided RAM in them. Therefore, if your Mac is still under warranty and needs servicing, to get this done by Apple you will have to swap out the new RAM with the old RAM.

Which isn’t to say you should go out and pay the egregious prices for Apple’s RAM. It just means you should keep those old sticks around as long as your warranty is good for.

Keep receipts and old RAM when upgrading | MacIssues

Photo by Yutaka Tsutano.

via Lifehacker
Keep Your Mac’s Old RAM After Upgrading

Cathryn Lavery, a New York City-based designer and founder of Calm the Ham, recently launched a Kickstarter for her latest design project, the Filmography of Guns. Previously, Lavery has designed posters depicting the Filmography of Cars and Aircraft, so researching iconic guns seemed like a natural next step. She says: This giant print illustrates a[…..]
via AllOutdoor.com
The Filmography of Guns Documents Iconic Guns in Popular Culture

Wed, 2014-09-03 07:48anatoliydimitrovAuditing is an essential task for monitoring your database environment. Auditing information can help you troubleshoot performance or application issues, and lets you see exactly what SQL queries are being processed. MariaDB’s Audit Plugin provides auditing functionality for not only MariaDB, but MySQL as well.
If you installed MariaDB from its official packages, you probably already have the plugin on your system, even though it’s neither installed nor enabled by default. Look for a file called server_audit.so (in Linux) or server_audit.dll (in Windows) inside your plugins directory (/usr/lib64/mysql/plugin/ in CentOS 6). If you are not sure which is your plugins directory, run the query SHOW VARIABLES LIKE ‘plugin_dir’;.
If you don’t find the plugin file inside your plugins directory, download it and place it in the plugins directory manually. Ensure that the MariaDB server can read the file by giving it 755 permissions and root user ownership in Linux.
Next, install the plugin using the command INSTALL PLUGIN server_audit SONAME ‘server_audit’;. To confirm the plugin is installed and enabled, run the query show plugins;. You should see it appear in the list like this:
+—————————–+———-+——————–+—————–+———+
| Name | Status | Type | Library | License |
+—————————–+———-+——————–+—————–+———+
| SERVER_AUDIT | ACTIVE | AUDIT | server_audit.so | GPL |
+—————————–+———-+——————–+—————–+———+
The MariaDB Audit Plugin has enough variables to let you fine-tune your auditing so you can concentrate on just the events and statements important to you. You can see the currently set variables with the command show global variables like "server_audit%";:
MariaDB [(none)]> SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE "server_audit%";
+——————————-+———————–+
| Variable_name | Value |
+——————————-+———————–+
| server_audit_events | |
| server_audit_excl_users | |
| server_audit_file_path | server_audit.log |
| server_audit_file_rotate_now | OFF |
| server_audit_file_rotate_size | 1000000 |
| server_audit_file_rotations | 9 |
| server_audit_incl_users | |
| server_audit_logging | ON |
| server_audit_mode | 0 |
| server_audit_output_type | file |
| server_audit_syslog_facility | LOG_USER |
| server_audit_syslog_ident | mysql-server_auditing |
| server_audit_syslog_info | |
| server_audit_syslog_priority | LOG_INFO |
+——————————-+———————–+
These variables should be specified in the MariaDB server configuration file (/etc/my.cnf.d/server.cnf in CentOS) in the [mysqld] section in order to be persistent between server restarts. To have the variable server_audit_logging set to ON, for example, add the line server_audit_logging=ON to the file.
Here are some of the most important variables:
server_audit_logging – Enables audit logging; if it’s not set to ON, audit events will not be recorded and the audit plugin will not do anything.
server_audit_events – Specifies the events you wish to have in the log. By default the value is empty, which means that all events are recorded. The options are: CONNECTION (users connecting and disconnecting), QUERY (queries and their result), and TABLE (which tables are affected by the queries).
server_audit_excl_users, server_audit_incl_users – These variables specify which users’ activity should be excluded from or included in the audit. server_audit_incl_users has the higher priority. By default, all users’ activity is recorded.
server_audit_output_type – By default auditing output is sent to a file. The other option is syslog, meaning all entries go to the syslog facility.
server_audit_syslog_facility, server_audit_syslog_priority – Specifies the syslog facility and the priority of the events that should go to syslog.
Usage
Once you have the audit plugin configured and running, you can examine the log file, which by default is /var/lib/mysql/server_audit.log in CentOS. There you will find all the events that have been enabled by the server_audit_logging variable. For example, CONNECTION entries will show you the user and from where connects and disconnects occur, like this:
20140901 15:33:43,localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,5,0,CONNECT,,,0
20140901 15:45:42,localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,5,0,DISCONNECT,,,0
Examples of TABLE and QUERY entries look like these:
20140901 15:19:44,localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,4,133,WRITE,employees,salaries,
20140901 15:19:44,localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,4,133,QUERY,employees,’DELETE FROM salaries LIMIT 100′,0
The first entry shows that there were WRITE operations on the database employees and the table salaries. The query that made the WRITE changes follows: DELETE FROM salaries LIMIT 100. The order of these statements will be always the same – first the TABLE event and then the QUERY event that caused it.
A READ operation looks like:
20140901 15:20:02,localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,4,134,READ,employees,salaries,
20140901 15:20:05,localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,4,134,QUERY,employees,’SELECT * FROM salaries LIMIT 100′,0
Reading the audit log file is great for a quick casual look, but it’s not a practical way to monitor database logs. Chances are you’ll be better off using the syslog option and taking advantage of tools that report on syslogs.
You can send the audit entries to a syslog facility such as rsyslod (which is the default for CentOS and most Linux distributions) by changing the value of the variable server_audit_output_type to syslog, and you can make this setting permanent by adding the line server_audit_output_type=syslog to the [mysqld] part of the file /etc/my.cnf.d/server.cnf and then restarting the MariaDB service.
Once you do that, you should see syslog events for the USER facility with INFO priority appearing in the syslog. By default, CentOS is configured to receive such events in the /var/log/messages file, in which you should then see lines such as:
Sep 1 16:05:35 localhost mysql-server_auditing: localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,3,0,CONNECT,,,0
Sep 1 16:05:39 localhost mysql-server_auditing: localhost.localdomain,root,localhost,3,3,QUERY,,’SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE "server_audit%"’,0
From this point on you can do almost anything with the audit log entries, including sending them to a centralized syslog server or processing them for certain type of events of interest.
As you can see, the MariaDB Audit Plugin can help DBAs by providing information that’s useful for tasks from simple troubleshooting to corporate compliance logging.
Tags: HowtoPlugins
About the Author
Anatoliy Dimitrov
Anatoliy Dimitrov is an open source enthusiast with substantial professional experience in databases and web/middleware technologies. He is as interested in technical writing and documentation as in practical work on complex IT projects. His favourite databases are MariaDB (sometimes MySQL) and PostgreSQL. He is currently graduating his master’s degree in IT and aims to a PhD in Bionformatics in his home town University of Sofia.
via Planet MySQL
Introducing the MariaDB Audit Plugin

Ruger has just launched a new product to distributors today and is now offering consumers a limited time chance to win this new model (the “New Unannounced Product”) and receive it on September 8th, the exact day it will be revealed to consumers and available in stores. From just 5:00 p.m. ET on September 2nd […]

Read More …

The post Ruger “New Unannounced Product” Flash Sweepstakes appeared first on The Firearm Blog.

via The Firearm Blog
Ruger “New Unannounced Product” Flash Sweepstakes

Why do two men from very similar socioeconomic and educational backgrounds sometimes take very different life paths? Is nature or nurture more important in determining a man’s success in his relationships and career? What physiological and psychological traits present in a man’s younger years predict his chances of living a long, flourishing life? In 1938, […]
via The Art of Manliness
Love Is All You Need: Insights from the Longest Longitudinal Study on Men Ever Conducted

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports on a new study (abstract) showing that low-carb diets have better health benefits than low-fat diets in a test without calorie restrictions. "By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity. While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat. They actually lost lean muscle mass, which is a bad thing,’ Dr. Mozaffarian said. ‘Your balance of lean mass versus fat mass is much more important than weight. And that’s a very important finding that shows why the low-carb, high-fat group did so metabolically well.’ … In the end, people in the low-carbohydrate group saw markers of inflammation and triglycerides — a type of fat that circulates in the blood — plunge. Their HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, rose more sharply than it did for people in the low-fat group. Blood pressure, total cholesterol and LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, stayed about the same for people in each group."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

via Slashdot
Low-Carb Diet Trumps Low-Fat Diet In Major New Study

Moe Qureshi—a chemist at the University of Toronto—gave his ALS bucket challenge a shocking twist when he decided to use liquid nitrogen instead of ice. I would be terrified just by the thought of poring liquid over my head at -321°F (-196ºC), but Moe survived the challenge unscathed—thanks to science.

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via Gizmodo
Chemist uses liquid nitrogen instead of ice in ALS bucket challenge