About
Hello there, I’m Jon Stephens. I’m an American who lives in… various places. Currently, it’s Stockholm, Sweden.
For the last ten years or so, I’ve made my living as a writer and sometime website developer/DBA. These days, I prefer the former, and let others do most of the actual coding.
I work for MySQL AB as a technical writer. In theory I’m in charge of the documentation for:
- MySQL Cluster (a.k.a.
NDB) - Partitioning
- The Replication (This is a relatively new responsibility for me, and there’s a moral to the Hidden Story behind this, the short version being: “Never go out drinking with Lars. He’s an evil, evil man.”)
- XML and XPath functionality
In practise, however, it sometimes appears as though these things are actually in charge of me.
Just for example… Remember those Macromedia ads for Dreamweaver? The ones having the guy sitting at a <table>...</table> in front of a <window>...</window>, and the tagline “…for people who see the world in code”? My world looks sort of like that now, except in my case it’s not HTML but rather DocBook XML.
Even so, I love my job, because it pays the bills, gives me the freedom to do some incredible things whilst remaining employed, and provides the opportunity to work with and learn from some extraordinarily smart and talented people.
I’ve also written fair-sized chunks of the MySQL documentation for Triggers, Stored Routines, and the Event Scheduler.
I also revamped and put online the documentation for the Cluster APIs. These include the NDB API, which is basically a way for your C++ programs to talk directly to Cluster data nodes without needing to go through a MySQL Server, as well as the MGM API, which lets your C programs talk to a Cluster management server.
I recently edited the MySQL 5.1 Cluster Certification Guide (several chapters of which I also wrote), and which is now (after numerous delays) available.
I’ve also co-authored, edited, or been the technical reviewer of several books on Web and Open Source technologies, such as MySQL (of course), PHP, JavaScript/DOM, and general Web development. Most recently I was the technical reviewer for Christian Heilmann’s Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax, just published by Apress. The last non-MySQL book I had a hand in was PHP 5 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (also published by Apress), to which I contributed several chapters. (Paul makes fun of me because I suck at bash and write shell scripts in PHP, but that’s another story.)
I’m the father of an incredible little girl named Eleanor. Elly was 4 in April (her birthday happens to fall smack dab in the middle of Songkran, the Thai New Year). I sometimes tell people that she dragged me halfway round the planet just so she could be born. (Then my job dragged me most of the rest of the way around the planet, at least for the next couple of years. I miss her.) Those who’ve actually met her and experienced her incredible presence seem inclined to believe me when I say that. Elly is exceedingly intelligent and outgoing. She is also gorgeous, and when she becomes a teenager I shall likely be ordering myself a little something from the Louisville Slugger Company back in the States to help impress upon would-be suitors the advisability of maintaining a respectful distance.
Elly’s mother and I aren’t together any more. That’s mostly my fault. But I like to think that I’ve learnt from my mistakes.
After making a couple more of those, I’ve managed to find somebody rather nice, whom I’ve been dating for the last few months.
Other stuff about me that you may or may not find interesting:
- I’m a Buddhist (not a very good one, but I try). Basically, I believe that I don’t have a soul, but that I’ll live forever — until I’ve become sufficiently enlightened to overcome the need to be born again. I recite the Five Precepts every morning and evening, and try to be mindful of them, even if I’m not successful in following them all the time.
- I quit using a Windows desktop in favour of Linux a couple of years ago. (Disclaimer: At one time, this site ran on a Windows 2000 Server box). My preferred distro is OpenSuSE (10.2 is pretty damn good) and I’ve settled on a KDE desktop (if I had to choose between Gnome and a command line with half the keys missing, I’d pick the command line with half the keys missing). I used to use WindowMaker, and I still like the NeXT-style UI. From time to time, I play with XFCE and E17 in my quest for a desktop that’s easy on both the eyes and system resources. I also mess around with FreeBSD and (Open)Solaris a bit.
- I should really quit smoking.
- I’m not quite so thoroughly addicted to coffee as I was for a while.
- Sometime over the course of the last year or so, I finally learnt that it was okay to like myself. At least a little bit. (Thanks, Silvia.)
- During my last visit to Thailand, I actually got to the point where I could read some of the signs, which amazed me no end. Unfortunately, I’ve forgot most of the Thai I learnt already. Fortunately, I’ve not forgot how gracious the Thai people are, and I still keep in touch with a few friends there.
- I might have to add Swedish to the language list. The problem there is that as soon as they hear you mess up, many (if not most) Swedes immediately switch to English.
- I’ve recently discovered that I rather like chillout music.
- I love spicy food. The hotter, the better. Thai food is wonderful. I used to be addicted to Mexican food, but Mexican restaurants in Australia tend to be run by people who think it’s an offshoot of Italian cooking. Oddly enough, the best Mexican food I’ve found so far outside Mexico and the US Southwest was at a Texas-style restaurant in Uppsala whose fajitas were to die for. Swedish food is good but not that exciting (however, it should be noted that I can happily consume my own weight in pepparkakor). Fortunately, there are many good Indian, Thai, and Chinese places in Stockholm.