NYC Rooftops Go Green!

Many rooftops in the farthest reaches of the bronx have adopted a methodology of greening their rooftops. I am sure when everyone catches "Wind" we'll all be able to breath just a little easier.


More information on Sustainable South Bronx can be found here:
South Bronx Green Roof

There's a green roof bill in albany to give home owners a tax credit for compliance.
Brownstoner Green Roof

AeroBalloon in Central Park

Our client AeroBalloon had its latest launch today right here in Central Park. Our Marc was on hand to take a few photos — he designed the banner that surrounds the balloon envelope, and all the signage you'll see throughout the park.

If you're in the New York metro area looking for a real treat, head straight to Cherry Hill in Central Park — rides are being given daily through August 22.



More details at aeroballoon.com.

From the “Say What?” Dept.

Received in today's email: a newsletter containing the following phrase:

“...professionals are seeking help understanding the best way to achieve the potentially significant upside benefits while minimizing the disruption of change and capturing significant new opportunities in their organization.”

Was this written by an actual person?

Rillito River Project

Today we launched a new website for the Rillito River Project, an organization in Tucson, AZ, that uses site-specific artworks and performances to draw attention to the plight of the Southwest's vanishing rivers.

Founded and led by Tucson artist and visionary Ellen Benjoya Skotheim, the Rillito River Project is enjoying its first CD release: a recording of a live performance of Patmore Lewis's Elemental Flow, a composition commissioned by the Rillito River Project and performed in a special concert in the dry riverbed of the Rillito River at the base of Tucson's Catalina Mountains.

A reprise concert will be held October 18, 2008. You can learn all about it and how to volunteer or contribute at rillitoriverproject.org.

For MetaFoundry, this represents a conflation of two areas that matter most to us: water and the arts. We love being part of the RRP team and supporting its singular mission and unique programming.

MySQL Query Logging in MAMP

MAMP is a LAMP environment in an application for OS X. It saves a lot of time getting a local development environment going especially if you're changing computers often. If you use MAMP it may not be immediately straight-forward how to enable MySQL Query Logging since it has an executable that starts and stops MySQL and Apache and it uses a separate MySQL socket.

Why use sql query logging? A great way to learn about or optimize an application is to watch how it interacts with a database. You can issue a command from within an application and see exactly what commands it triggers to MySQL. This is extremely helpful when trying to get a handle on an application that utilizes an abstract and/or highly normalized data structure.

First, a couple warnings. MySQL Query Logging should only be used in development environments. The log files it creates could potentially become humongous in size. Also, it greatly reduces MySQL performance while it is running.

1) Stop MySQL with this command from Terminal

/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqladmin -u root -proot --socket=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock shutdown

2) Issue this command in Terminal

/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqld_safe --port=8889 --socket=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock --lower_case_table_names=0 --pid-file=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.pid --log-error=/Applications/MAMP/logs/mysql_error_log --log=/tmp/mysqlLOG.lg &

You can monitor the output of mysql in Terminal with this command:

sudo tail -f /tmp/mysqlLOG.lg

As you issue commands to your local MySQL server you will see them generated instantly in a continuous scroll in a terminal window.

MySQL Query Logging will run until the next to you stop MAMP. It will not do query logging unless you issue the start command as above and include the --log= directive.