Why Not 4.1?

Why are hosts not upgrading to MySQL 4.1? Is everyone just waiting for 5.0? My host is just now making the move to 4.1 and yes, it can break some things but they will be very minor breaks and will affect people who wrote poor SQL.

4.1 is needed. Sub-queries need to be a standard thing. Referential integrity shouldn’t be a question of what table type a person is using. Once 4.1 gets into full swing hopefully we’ll have something that people choose to write good code for.

In other news, as soon as this comes on the market I will be buying one.

Database Abandonment

After messing with the database that runs this site last night and trying to plan the new release, I am tempted to completely drop the database and start from scratch. I would probably pick out some of the best posts and port them over but I don’t think porting the whole database is the best idea.

Right now posts do not have categories and in the new instance they are going to have them. I will have to go through and edit every post’s categories. It’s not something I am prepared to do.

I guess I have had the database so unkempt that it deserves to be scrapped. I just don’t want to lose so much data, but when you must, you must.

Ruby on Rails

I have been playing with Ruby on Rails over the past few days and there is nothing else to say except, “wow”.

I built a whole application, database and all, in 30 minutes. Ruby’s “generate” scripts created all of the controllers, views, and models and all I had to do was edit the controllers and views to suit my needs. I threw in some of the Rails Ajax stuff and had a basic accounting application up and running in 30 minutes.

Work is a week past its halfway point and things are going well. I’ve found that PowerBooks have trouble connecting to WPA-TKS protected wireless networks. Does anyone know why this is? I get an “encryption method” error whenever I try to connect. Anyone with ideas please send them to s [at] badice dot com.

Hurricane Dennis

I have been paying pretty close attention to Hurricane Dennis and as the possibility of it hitting New Orleans gets higher the worry goes up. For those who don’t know, New Orleans sits well below sea level and is protected by dikes from Lake Pontchartrain. If a category 4 hurricane hits the area it will be devastating and we may actually see the “end” of New Orleans. If the dikes are breeched the entire city will be under 15 ft. of water. The real scary part is the fact that after the storm is over the water will only be able to recede to the point where the dike failed which means the city could be under 2-6 ft. of water for weeks as it has no other way to escape.

It’s a very scary possibility and from the most recent news that I have heard New Orleans and Jefferson Parishes are under voluntary evacuations right now.

More About the Upgrade

I mentioned that I had moved servers and that changes were on their way so I thought I’d expand a little on what’s happening.

This site is now hosted with A Small Orange. So far I am very pleased with the service and the technical support I have received during the move. The reasons for the move are many but the most obvious one was the downtime and latency issues. Hopefully all of that will be a thing of the past now.

I have been doing a lot of picture taking and most of it is available at flickr. This will soon be integrated into this site as well. A new visual design is in the works and maybe a few other exciting things.

I have left my comments about the London bombings out for right now as I try to get my thoughts together. My thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who were killed in this senseless and cowardly act of violence.

We Are The Media

I am listening to Adam Curry’s podcast at Gnomedex and he is bringing up some great, amazing points.

He talks about how normal people are quickly becoming the media and how they will soon be the media. Really great points and insight into the future and where we’ve come from. I really enjoyed the podcast and it just shows that we are going to start seeing more and more podcasts and with iTunes 4.9 getting podcasts is a lot easier.

Everything will start becoming very interesting over the next few months and years. I can’t wait to see where it all leads.

Terrorism and Double Standards Americans

I am sure that most Americans watched the President speak at Fort Bragg or if they didn’t they caught a recap of it on a national network. To be honest, I am not a fan of Bush’s public speaking, it’s not his best quality. However, I don’t see that as a reason to bash the guy. Not everyone can speak well in public places, so what.

About Iraq and terrorism. Those who don’t believe that there was and now is a terrorist presence in Iraq are horribly misinformed. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has had a presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria since before the Iraq war. He was actually a “competitor” to al-Queda till he decided that to further his cause he needed to partner with bin Laden.

We have people talking about how poverty/AIDS need to be dealt with yet the suffering of a people is no big deal. Last time I took a philosophy or political science class I could have sworn they taught me that poverty in the U.S. and the world is a necessity and cannot be stomped out. For society to work, there has to be an inbalance, it’s basic. The level of inbalance is dependent on the type of society and the level of autonomy the people have over their own lives. A movie star can think whatever they like about helping a few hundred people in a village in Africa but their actions, no matter what amount of input/cash they have from the outside are not going to affect the entire world. Am I say it’s wrong to help the needy? No, of course not. Help them any way you can but saying that it should be the “number one priority” is a little much.

People will say that helping a single child is a “huge victory” and you know what, that’s fine. It’s kind of like a bunch of people saying that finding a single rocket in Iraq that contained nerve gas. The only difference of course is the people who heard about the rocket being found shot it down as not being a big deal and saying things like “It’s just one rocket”…

If you are against the campaign in Iraq, ask yourself why. Is it because it’s cool to be different and rebel against something? Attacking Bush’s words is the manly thing to do. Why not attack policy with fact? Respecting morality does not necessarily mean “believing in Jesus”, it means not killing innocent women and children because you believe in chaos. There is a difference between fighting American troops and blowing yourself up outside of a school.

Can there be a free society in Iraq? Yes. Why is this so difficult for people to understand? A free society does not mean free from crime or terrorist problems. It means freedom from oppression, which, last time I checked, under Saddam the Iraqi people weren’t very free from oppression. As an example the Israeli’s and for the most part the Palestinians live free from oppression yet they still deal with terrorism everyday. The Iraqi people want to govern themselves, they have made that very clear. The only thing standing in their way is the simple fact that there is a number of people who want chaos and death to the rule country. They will have no power if a government comes to place, so their best bet is to try and stop it. This isn’t about terrorists fighting Americans because if it were, there would be a lot less Iraqi deaths and a lot more American ones. They are killing people who want to bring structure to the nation, policemen, governors, ambassadors, and people standing in line to sign up for a government job.

These people don’t want a structured government to come to Iraq because it can and will (if you know anything about Middle Eastern politics) stir up problems in other nations. People in other countries will realize that it is possible to have a free society in a very religious part of the world where there are religious rules and regulations. They will stand up for themselves and there are people who do not want that.

And please, for the last time, would people please stop saying that this is a “Christian vs. Muslim” thing. I’m tired of it. You know and I know that this is not about religion.