Posts by Mark Pitchless

Running the Gauntlet: Atari's classic ... now and then

Elf needs health!

2011's Best... HD TVs

Not so, the VT is not actually that much better than the GT, both have Infinite Black Pro so all you really get extra is a slightly better black (the GT is already amazing), 2 pairs of glasses included, record to SD and advanced calibration (only useful for true videophiles who have calibrators). The GT30 really does hit a sweet spot, which will be why so many sites are saying it is their TV of the year.

The Secret of Monkey Island

You fight like a dairy farmer!

For me it was the first game that really made me laugh and laugh and laugh again. The insult, retort sword fighting was an especially nice touch. Genius all round, arrr.

Apple MacBook Pro 17in 2011

Firewire Sound

For some of us Firewire is essential for external sound card usage. USB just does not cut it, especially on older MacBooks I have used.

ScaleBase shatters MySQL for scalability

Why MySQL

Probably because there are lots of mysql shops struggling with performance, so they need to shard first. Mind you they may not be the best people to try an extract money from for DB tools.

In some cases MySQL is actually very fast because it is not feature complete.

OS X Lion roars, coughs on appearance in App Store

iTunes is needed

Why the hell do I need iTunes to install an OS update ffs?

Had to disable it after a previous update caused iTunes to open every time I pressed a media key (trying to control another app) with no option to turn it off. Some of us, shock horror, do actually use other media players.

Official: Pastafarian strainer titfer is religious headgear

Pastafarianism came from

Cornwall?

Which kind of cloud database is right for you?

I believe I did, Bob.

Querying key value stores: http://browsertoolkit.com/fault-tolerance.png

Fader pushers mourn Fritz Sennheiser

Sennheiser HD 25

The finest DJ/Monitoring headphones known to man.

PostgreSQL trumpets 8.4 release

Hosting support

I'd say another big reason for mysql being everywhere is hosting support. I'd guess alot more offer MySQL than PostgreSQL. For all those users that want to dump a PHP gallery, forum, cms, chat room etc, etc into their web space and hook it up to a DB. Which snowballs, if your writing such an app your going to target MySQL so more people can use it. E.g. gallery2 supported lots of db, but for gallery3 the devs have decided to only target MySQL.

Sadly all this has contributed to generally poor database understanding and use from developers. It makes you want to cry when you see the schema behind some common web apps.

Non-beta Google betas may lose beta tags

Figure out a way to fix that

"We’re going to figure out a way to fix that"

How much figuring does it take to remove the word beta from a few templates and images?