Thanks, Macromedia!

alternateorg on October 13, 2004

I’d just like to go ahead and extend a few thank-yous to Macromedia right about now:

1. Thanks for making me delete the cached ActionScript 2 classes directory every time I export a SWF using AS2! I think it’s really cool that you won’t let me set a preference to automatically use the newest version of a class if the FLA resides on a server! Deleting that directory every time I export is a treat!

2. Oh, and your bug-checking tools can’t be beat! I mean, not telling me a MovieClip doesn’t exist when I try to use it in ActionScript but instead just doing nothing at all is tops! I mean, what MORON would type “UIScrollBar” instead of “UIScrollbar?”

3. Also, the fact that the Flex server is $12,000.00 and that FlexBuilder doesn’t work on Macintosh, I mean, this stuff is really ground-breaking. Let alone the fact that you can’t download developer versions of this stuff. I didn’t need that $8.99 and those 3 days in order to get a CD from you, anyway.

Hats off to Macromedia for being another awesome closed-source developer of software development tools!

Luca

alternateorg on May 13, 2004

Luca, a cocoa-based accounting system written in Java using MySQL as it’s database looks really neat, and I’d love to integrate it into the system I’m writing for Tai’s company. But god damn, where are the icons? Push-buttons in the top bar for print and export? For a guy who waxes philosophical about the Mac’s many advantages, he doesn’t seem that interested in making nice-looking applications. Sheesh.

I'm sure there's a lesson in here somewhere…

alternateorg on March 26, 2004

If Tai ever asks you which databases he can drop from his MySQL server, don’t tell him he can remove the one that contains your weblog and descriptions of pictures of your kids. Because if you were to do that, you’d end up losing that data. Just a heads-up.

Flash + Data = ?

alternateorg on April 24, 2003

Macromedia links Flash apps to data.

My thoughts as I’m reading this: Sounds good, sounds good, sounds about right, hrm,, no direct MySQL support, sounds good, sounds good, ColdFusion? People still use that? Sounds good, sounds good… $999 price tag for Flash Remoting? Good luck, Macromedia.

Just as they always do, Macromedia comes really close to getting something.. then just leaves you feeling screwed. To use PHP/MySQL, you still have to go through the still-required extra steps of taking MySQL data into XML, and writing your own ActionScript parser just so you can get nifty vector animations along with your dynamic data in the same compiled binary file.

Macromedia’s latest efforts would have you (if you feel like paying a ton of money instead) buy a ColdFusion license for at least $1299, or as much as $4999 (depending on the level of quality you need), buy a MSSQL Server license for at least $4999/processor, buy Windows 2000 server for $1199 to run the entire thing on….PLUS the $999 for Flash Remoting.

On the other hand (back to PHP), you could just write some XML-parsing code in ActionScript and some MySQL-XML translating code in PHP. Run it on Linux. Licensing fees? Nada. Massive development environment? Nope. Expensive production environment? Perhaps, but still not on-par with the Windows/ColdFusion world.

Or you could just use XHTML, forego the animation and buzzwords and get your files down to like 4k instead of 400k. Skip the XML step and get dyanamic data in its native form into your native code.

Why was I excited about Flash again? Oh, right. Because it takes 3x as long for me to produce so I get paid 3x the amount. Right.

I knew Windows 2000 was insecure, but damn

alternateorg on May 6, 2002

Eager as I am to learn relatively new skills, I recently converted an old Gateway PC I have from Windows98 to Windows 2000 Advanced Server running ColdFusion and IIS.

Did I download any patches, you ask? Any service packs, you inquire?

But of course not, as it has been less than 1 day and I just recently got SQL Server running an imported MySQL database. Upgrades and patches are for another time.

And just now, I attempted to view some rudimentary CFM files, and voila. This is the message I received:

HELLO! Welcome to http://www.worm.com !
Hacked By Chinese!

Wonderfuckingful. How do you un-hack Windows? Anyone? All my CFM files render this way. Rad.

The penguin's in one corner..

alternateorg on May 30, 2001

Sorry about the lack of updates recently… I’ve been wrestling with a dilapidated HP and SuSE Linux the past few days. Good news: I did finally get PHP, Apache & MySQL playing nicely together, and now can recompile those bastards at will. It’s this damn Mac-networking thing I can’t get the hang of. But I’m sure I will soon, hopefully. So please be patient, once that’s taken care of, you’ll start seeing some new sites spewed forth, most notably Retinal.nu, a site that Eddie and I are working on together, and an oh-so-special website showcasing the cuteness of my 2 kids, one brand-new and the other not-so-much.

X PHP

alternateorg on April 21, 2001

I just found this WebMonkey article on how to correctly configure and install PHP as a DSO for OS X’s built-in Apache installation (which requires an update). PHP actually works for me now (yay! on a Mac!), but my previous MySQL install was a little screwy. Still working on getting PHP + Apache + MySQL to work together flawlessly, but now I’m much closer. The article also lists a place to get real OS X 10.0 (not PB or Rhapsody) packages for PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL and others.