Archives

Archives / 2005 / October

  • MySQL 5.0 Released

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    MySQL 5.0 was just released for production use. I've been using MySQL for a recent project, and I must say that I have been pretty impressed. The latest version adds support for triggers, views, cursors, stored procs, etc., reducing the number of "big" missing features from MySQL by a bit. The thing that has most impressed me about MySQL so far is the tool support. Usually, when you work with OpenSource products, you get some inferior, thrown together piece of crap or some command line only admin option. However, in the case of MySQL, you have a ton of great tools with UIs that are much better than the current generation of MS SQL tools IMO. There is also a tool that I had a chance to use that is far superior to anything Microsoft offers when converting databases (MySQL Migration Toolkit). It takes existing SQL Server, Oracle, Access, etc. databases and will not only construct the matching schema and create the tables in MySQL, but will also import your existing data. I used this to transfer an existing SQL Server DB and it worked insanely well.

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  • Articulate Presenter Wins Again

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    Articulate Presenter took the gold for the "Most Innovative" E-Learning technology of 2005 at the Brandon Hall Excellence in E-Learning awards, beating out its main competitor Macromedia Breeze once again (Breeze ended up taking home the bronze). Last month, Presenter took home the "Best of Show" award at TechLearn. I've hand a hand in the product's code since the first release, so it is nice to see Articulate really taking off lately, racking up some big awards, and smashing the competition. It's definately a pleasure to have the opportunity to work on such a great product for a company full of such awesome people.

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  • Exorcism

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    I haven't seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose quite yet. From what I had heard, it seemed like just another failed attempt to top the all time scariest movie ever in many people's minds, The Exorcist. However, the story of Emily Rose is apparently quite different than the story of the little boy that  The Exorcist was based off of. Apparently, the story comes from the events in the life of Anneliese Michel, a woman who died during what many believe was a misdiagnosis of epilepsy/schizophrenia as demonic possession. In any case, after reading this article from Newsweek, I am tempted to see the movie, which is based on a story that illustrates a point that is quite the opposite of the one in The Exorcist. Either Hollywood really jazzed up the story and cut out the main point, or everyone I have talked to that has seen the movie seems to have missed it

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  • Speaking of IM

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    If you needed one more reason not to use Google Talk...looks like Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to play together.

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  • Google Talk Not Talking

    6 Comments

    So it's been a month or so since I said Google talk was a bit too crappy to get people to switch over. I've had it running in my toolbar since the day it was released. Since day two: I have received zero IMs, I have received zero invitations, I have heard nothing about it.

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  • The Making of Flash 8

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    This "The Making of Flash 8" video reminds me of what Microsoft is doing with Channel9... quite a  bit more commercialized (like the kind of thing you would expect to see playing during a Macromedia conference), but pretty of cool nontheless.

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