webGENEius web-GENE-ius

DDO module 8 was released. I ran the new noobs area and got some screenshots. Ths shots are in the gallery.

I took and passed the MySQL Developer 1 Exam today. It was a very difficult test. Many of the things I studied for the exam weren't on the test. Many of the things I didn't study as much were. I guess that's just the breaks. Luckily I passed the test.

If you are preparing for the exam, I highly suggest getting the MySQL Certification Study Guide. Study it and know it inside and out or you won't pass.

Also, if you are not in the habit of using the mysql commandline client, plan on getting to know it. There are several questions on the test related to it. Also data is displayed on the exam as if it came from the client.

I think I'm not going to take the developer 2 exam until March 2009. I need sometime to study and prepare for it. I don't want a major exam looming over the holiday season.

THE BAIL OUT IS BULLSHIT! YOU BROKE IT, YOU BOUGHT IT!


Or more finely spoken.

The so called bailout package is like Paulson delivering a sucker punch while the fed crouches behind you knees.

Let me get this straight. So the Fed's bad monetary policy caused Banks to take unnecessary risks in the form of bad loans and credit expansion. So when times get tough the treasury department buys up the debt undoubtedly over priced and will ultimately resell those debts at below purchase price to their buddies who just made billions on the credit expansion ...

That's right the victim is you -- the tax payer! Anyone as pissed as I am? Read this and you'll be more pissed.

Here's what to do about it

Too often PHP free software is alot like a teenager, caught in the middle trying to be all things to all people. Trying to be all things to all people is impossible. At the most you'll only end of with the appearance of being all things. And that only if you have a fleet of lawyers and PR people to spread your hopeful untruths. Politicians like Obama and McCain and companies like Microsoft fit this genre. Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, Cake and few other PHP projects fall in to this category too. Way too much code for way to little effect. And sometimes worse -- code for code's sake only! Or just because "I can and I think it's neat"!

Consider Cake. In a typical Cake application 80% of execution time is spent preparing to handle the request. That's how long it takes to set up all the components, models and all the other pointless stuff it does just to start the thing.

Often PHP projects over provide functionality that is not needed or is over the top for the person employing the software. Honestly using Drupal for a blog?

I know I've already covered this topic!

Today I read over on the Site Point blog that Rasmus Lerdorf agrees with me! Less really is more!

That's why I'm writing Bloogers. It contains only the code I need and no more. Can you imagine what the code would be like if I had tried to use Propel and Yaml with it? I know, I might want to change databases! Riiiigggght. If I do PDO provides all the abstraction I need. And if I did I would want to optimize all my SQL to take advantage of all the new functionality of my new RDBMS.

For now I'm keeping it simple stoopid. Build applications for a specific platform. Build them with the minimal code to meet functional requirements.

Cheers!

When I was a kid I had a friend who when asked, "whatcha been doin?" would reply, "Just various things." In my circle of friends "various things" be came a catch all for just about anything. Hence the title of this blog post ...

Thing 1

I've rewritten this blog with my own source. I call it Bloogers. Bloogers is blog software written specifically for SQLite and PHP5 with SQLite PDO enabled. Honestly who needs a big 'ol RDBMS for something as simple as a blog? GOOP Gallery 3 is integrated. The objective of this project is to produce a light weight blog system with a light weight code structure to match the light weight database that backs it up.

Thing 2

I haven't recieved any feed back from GOOPGallery 3. And haven't worked on it much lately. Feel free to use whats there. I hope it is useful. I'll get back to it some day. It's nearly complete anyway.

Thing 3

Linspire is dead! Thats a good thing. I haven't used it in over a year and a half any who. I was a long time user and it was my first distro. Much better and much easier to use distro's have come along since then.

Now that Xandros has taken it over and it's going back to its Debian roots, I might consider going back to Freespire at some point. We'll see what Xandros does with it.

DUDE! PHP CMS's, Forums, Galleries, and Blogs all have two things in common:

1. They are database driven apps
2. None of them use the database


Confused? Let me explain. The assorted projects in the cloud try to abstract the database out of their application so that they are not dependent on them in anyway. This gives them the advantage of supporting multiple databases. But that also means the application does not leverage their single most important quality -- the database!

There are so many things that get left out of applications that run primarily on MySQL anyway -- triggers, procedures, hierarchies, date/time functions, string manipulations, certain kind of joins, sub-queries. As a result the applications are relatively weak compared to custom applications that take full advantage of the data tier.

I'd like to see more free software applications make full utilization of the data tier and stop playing to the lowest common denominator.

In the future my projects will take this path.

GOOP Gallery 3 Alpha 2 has been packaged and is available for download.

The new LightBox module was included in this package.

Numerous bug fixes were also included.

Cheers!

I've put together a demo of GOOP Gallery 3 running with the new lightbox module. I'm looking forward to another alpha release in the next day or two. I've taken down the GOOPGallery3 alpha1 release on sourceforge.

Cheers!

I got around to doing a few things with GOOPGallery 3 again. I've fixed a few bugs since the alpha release and created a Lightbox module which uses the popular Lightbox 2 library. I hope to post a demo in the next couple of days. The code has been checked into the repository and you can check it out anonymously from sourceforge.net.

Cheers!