This is my first update in quite a while. I’m not dead. I had a few posts in draft mode, but I never finished them. The topics were:
- A web crawler script I wrote and some design issues I was having with it.
- I actually figured out some of the problems with it and made it much more efficient. So there really wasn’t any point in finishing the post. It was more of a thinking out loud kind of deal. - Why they should let MySQL die and why Monty Widenius should bite me.
- This was going to be my response to Monty’s Plea to people to save MySQL from Oracle (I don’t feel like finding the link, just google it). The gist was that he probably shouldn’t have sold out to Sun, would be better concentrating on MariaDB — a supposed MySQL successor, and that generally MySQL sucks and there are better alternatives anyway. I also held him responsible for the countless headaches I endure while being forced to use MySQL, and thus decided he could bite me. :) - How awful the jQuery plugin site is and some thoughts on how to replace it.
- I started writing this post because I have such a hard time keeping my plugins up-to-date due to the fact that the plugin directory is terrible. I started writing the post and just went through the site listing the problems I saw. The list became so massive that it clearly was something that I couldn’t handle on my own, so the post turned in to a call to action with the suggestion of using Google App Engine to run the site. But, the number of problems is depressing and thinking about spearheading a project of such magnitude in my free time was not at all appealing.
So, the holidays came and went. The new year as well. I’ve been extraordinarily busy at work and at home, extraordinarily lazy and tired.
But I do have one small announcement. Off and on over the past year, I’ve been toying with ActionScript and Flash and Flex because a long, long time ago, I thought I would pursue Flash as a game platform.
After some consideration, I will absolutely *NOT* be doing that. While ActionScript, as a language, isn’t terrible, I don’t particularly like it. It’s similar to Javascript, but with more crap that you have to do. The real problem I have is with Flash as a platform. In short, it’s probably one of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s slow, bloated, and full of known security holes. I could make a whole blog dedicated to how much I hate Flash and problems with it.
The only positive thing I can say about Flash is that it’s everywhere. Though, with all of the security problems, it may not turn out to be a good thing.
Instead — I’m trying to stay positive — I plan on focusing on some of the emerging Web App technologies as a platform. I have a feeling in 6 months, I’ll be back here griping about how ridiculous canvas, WebGl, etc. are.
I may try to write a simple game to test, or redo a certain game with flying corpses. So, until then.