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My Time Off The Grid

When I go off, I go waaaaaay off.

Very light blogging the last few days, but I’ve written a ton of code. All of it is really good, functionally, but nothing I’m prepared to share with the world. See, I have a tendency to get pretty sloppy with my programming unless I know exactly where I’m going before I start. In this case, I was always fixing this “one more thing”, and now I’ve got some cleaning up to do.

It’s not exactly spaghetti, but calling it ravioli would be fair. The reason I like to start any project with a definite roadmap of where I’m going is to avoid this exact situation.

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Sun Buys MySQL

I don’t write about tech stuff here too often, but since this blog, and most likely yours*, is backended by MySQL, it’s relevant. MySQL’s business model works like this–it’s free (as in beer) to use, but enterprise level users do pay the company for support. That’s what makes it so great for the web. People can back end blogs, content management systems, bulletin boards, and just about anything else they can imagine using freely available open-source tools. In fact, there’s even an acronym for the most commonly used tools working together (LAMP–Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). For the end user, more than likely nothing will change.

So why does it matter to us that Sun now owns it? Because the fact that Sun owns it means that Google, Microsoft, and Oracle don’t own it.

Story

*HM, I know you do your own blog engining…mad props.

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This Hits a Nerve

XKCD is an online comic strip for nerds.  Usually they stick to programming, uh, “jokes” and making fun of the fact that nerds can’t get girls.  I have had chick-getting skills so I mostly like this strip to laugh at my peers.  But this one cut pretty deep…