Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Got my invitation to Google Apps!

I got my invitation to the Google App Engine. So now I am trying to learn JavaScript and going back into Python. I looked into Python for Blender (here) but did not go far.

I wanted to get into Java to help with my understanding of ColdFusion. Java itself is OK but there is way too much buzz-wording going on with Sun. For example, Beans used to mean packaged objects that you could share over the internet. Now Java NetBeans is some kind of IDE for Java development? And don't get me started with Eclipse! The program is great, but a big memory hog because of Java.

So, Google App Engine is Python. I have mixed feelings, python is cool but as a web development language? And it acts like CGI, as in Perl, but only to an extent.

Perl is one language where the better a person is at writing it, the harder the code is to read. A great Perl developer can do more on one line than a C programmer can all day long. It is about equal to ColdFusion, except when you try to read it.

So what are my intentions with App Engine? Well I would like a basic web service that I can use to push data in and out of for this blog. I really don't know what for, but it seems fun right now. It would be easier if there were free LAMP hosts out there, maybe virtualization will bring that around.

I ought to check. Amazon's EC2 is all virtual servers, and so might be Google's app engine. If someone was sitting on a ton of bandwidth and a decent Linux server with XEN, they could host hundreds of LAMP servers on the cheap.

Random Musings...

Yes, I have random thoughts. Sometimes they are not random enough so I have created a random musing tab on the right. You might see it say something insulting, or ridiculous.. or both. It is a JavaScript file I have hosted on my google page creator site http://chris.hillman.googlepages.com/

The issue is that blogger does not let you upload some things. I suppose flash stuff might be the same (I will have to test that). So to fix that you can get a Google Page Creator account (I got one the day they were announced) and upload there.

So, for example my script's URL is http://chris.hillman.googlepages.com/randomtext.js, because my Google page's url is http://chris.hillman.googlepages.com and the file is loaded to the root by default. Then I just specify the URL in a SCRIPT SRC attribute and BOOM! Random text joy.

It is really pretty lame but if you have a .JS file that you want to reference from Blogspot, this is one way to host it for free. Thank you a million Google, you guys ROCK!

Friday, April 4, 2008

Vista Retreat? XP to live longer?

I bought a cheap laptop at Best Buy that came with Vista. I pity people who buy a Vista laptop with 256mb of RAM. I immediately went out, found drivers and installed XP. It was very hard to find all the drivers (Toshiba A135-7404) and I know that even some savvy IT people would have trouble finding the drivers. Toshiba wanted to keep the laptops Vista only, but it was PAINFUL!

I bought the laptop to do Graphic Design work and web/email while I was living in hotels. The laptop's specs were plenty to run Photoshop and Flash, but Vista was too big to let them run without crashing. Even the SATA drive and Readyboost running was help, I had to buy RAM. But I would not pay Best Buy RAM prices and shipping to the hotel was an issue - since I didn't know where I'd be one week to the next.

Downgrade was the only option. Maybe someday I will add the necessary 2gb of RAM and put Vista back on it, but I bet I buy a new laptop long before then. Maybe I will move to Ubuntu on it before that is necessary. Photoshop and Flash are not happy under WINE yet. I love GIMP, but the lack of Flash is a problem.

So now that I have downgraded, I knew Microsoft could kill off XP at any point. The drop dead date is coming up, and then it gets another delay. Why? Ultra light laptops can't run Vista and Microsoft does not want any doors for Linux in the mainstream. So, not because they know their product is bloated and sloppy, but because it is so bloated and sloppy that it hurts their market penetration.

The "mission creep" of Vista has the better of them. They never saw a feature they didn't like and threw them all in. With no way to disable these options or de-bloat the operating system they were not prepared for the greener, lower power devices of the future. A fundamental flaw in Windows since NT has them by the short hairs almost 15 years later.

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