There has been a lot of talk on the news about the swine flu and how it is spreading fast and a lot of people are affected. Here is something worth checking out: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&source=embed&ll=-39.368279,34.453125&spn=173.385518,360&z=1

We use MySQL database for pretty much everything now days. It's de-facto standard for horizontally scaled web sites and it's used by biggest players in the industry. But one thing that is lacking, and which is very important for our regional market is proper Croatian collation support for utf8 charsets. Without it, MySQL server can't be considered choice for eg. government migration to open-source platform in near future.

We tried implementing it on our own for couple of times, but without any luck. The problem lies in fact that Croatian language (Serbian and Bosnian too) have digraph characters (single characters consisted of two characters - lj, nj and dž). And without proper support for those, we will never be able to sort things right (a-b-c-č-ć-d-dž-đ-...i-j-k-l-lj-m-n-nj-...u-v-z-ž)

What does it take to implement Croatian utf8 collation? It takes modifying source code beyond our knowledge (we tried creating new collation with Vietnamese as a base for digraphs as a pair of basic latin letter + accented Latin letter).

AFAIK the countries which would benefit from the same implementation (alongside Croatia) are: Bosnia, Serbia (for latin charset) and Monte Negro (for latin charset). So please, if you can - spread the word! I think that support for this would be appreciated by thousands of MySQL developers in our region who are now forced to use hacks from '90 to get correct sort order. :)

I've submitted S4 feature request to MySQL - http://bugs.mysql.com/44523 and
I've posted a feature request/proposition on official MySQL dev forum, so we will see what happens. It certainly wouldn't harm if you would sign in to bugs.mysql.com and MySQL dev forum and reply to my feature request and topic with "Yes please" or something similar. It's free, and it can make difference. :)

Prettyloaded is new crazy project from Big Spaceship crew. Their tribute to the vanishing art of Flash preloaders.

In times before fiber optics and broadband connections in our homes, advanced Flash sites took ages to load. While site was loading, the fancier loader you had, the more chances you got to keep visitors on site. Once site was loaded, you wouldn't see preloader in it's full glory ever again. Not until now!

ps. prettyloaded.com can and will mesmerize you. You have been warned. :)

Checkout more great wallpapers about design...

Since I updated FF to 3.0.9 (on Win XP), view source doesn't work. Even "firefox -safe-mode" crashes browser every time. Thank you Mozilla Html Validator plugin! Hope 10.000 error reports I sent will help you.

update 27-04-2009: Yes, my friends were right. Html Validator plugin was causing this. After updating to v0.8.5.6 problem gone. And note to FireFox plugin developers - please DON'T put this in install.rdf without being completely sure that your plugin won't break anything (maybe 10% of plugins can do this):
<em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>

Ha! I completely missed new function implemented in php 5.3 - old'skool "goto"! :) I am not particularly happy. Not happy at all.

Here is the latest on what the world is Googling the most.

a) "How do i know" question:

Shows us that people are above all concerned about voting. I believe that this is the legacy of the latest presidential elections in USA, so if we discard that as semi-relevant, what we have left is: pregnancy (sex) and love. Girls are obsessed in knowing are they pregnant or not - meaning that someone is not doing sexual education correctly and that youth today does not use protection. What is also curious is that girls want to know if boys LIKE and LOVE them, whereas boys only want to know if girl LIKES them. Boys will be boys.

a2) "How can i tell if" question:

Different question, showing same pattern as above, with a slight exception: people are puzzled and cannot tell if their TV is digital. As above, people want to know if they are registered to vote, if they are pregnant, and again; girls are into LOVE while boys are only into LIKE.

b) "Is it possible" question:

And here we go again with the pregnancy. With over 30 million results related to period and pregnancy, this topic again takes the crown. Right after pregnancy, comes bullet curving. To give you answer right here: NO it is not. Stop believing everything movies show you. Following that is a plethora of common everyday questions: elbow licking, sneezing with eyes open, and similar.

Bullet curving. C'mon people, seriously.

c) "the earth is" knowledge test

No, the Earth is not flat. We not only scientifically proved that, but we had people up in the space to tell us firsthand that it is round. There are 5 times as much results on the internet about flat Earth than about round. Education needs to be better in some countries i guess. Also, is the Earth really growing? Will it explode like a balloon?

What puzzles me is: why would someone think that Earth is a "cold dead place". It is impossible that a human being thinks that. After all, that person is typing on a computer. That computer had to be built by other people (or machines, but that machines were built by people at the end of a chain), so it is obvious that there are other human beings on this planet. What i think is that aliens are writing this on their alien blogs, as they have discovered that this Earth is not cold dead place. Right?

What Google needs to do is: open up gynecology clinic, and connect all those people talking about pregnancy with Google GynClin. iGyn or whatever. There is some serious money to be made there, obviously!

On 26 February 2008, Sun acquired MySQL AB. Today, Oracle Corporation announced acquisition of Sun Microsystems. All that acquiring is nice, but what's in it for us - MySQL developers? Well, we will have to wait and see. I wouldn't have anything against switching to Oracle. :) Oracle was my first real database I used back in '90s (Oracle 7), and after reading 2 meters of Oracle books, I was pretty happy with PL/SQL, triggers, views and stored procedures. Switching to MySQL was hard. :)

What is certain - Oracle does not plan to shutdown MySQL. According to Oracle FAQ about the acquisition: "MySQL will be an addition to Oracle’s existing suite of database products, which already includes Oracle Database 11g, TimesTen, Berkeley DB open source database, and the open source transactional storage engine, InnoDB,".

What do you think will happen to MySQL?

No, YOU can disconnect from the Internet, and take your IE with you. :) It's really sad to see message like this coming from Microsofts latest .net distribution installer in year 2009. My computer, my nintendo wii, my mobile phone, my tv, even my refrigerator... everything is connected to the internet. Why would I disconnect now, when we worked so hard all those years to connect that shit up? :)

I am a big SCI-FI fan, and I like to watch a series or two every now and then when I get home form hard day at work. The problem is, I don't have a thing to watch at the moment - all my favorite SCI-FI series got canceled! Oh course you Nielsen Ratings and American Lost loving audience! And course you SciFi channel for rebranding into SyFy. Why???

History of cancellation of my favorite shows goes something like this:

1. Farscape series got canceled in 2002
2. Star Trek Enterprise series got canceled in 2005
3. Stargate SG1 got canceled in 2007
4. Stargate Atlantis got canceled in 2009
5. Battlestar Galactica got canceled in 2009

To compensate, I had to switch to mainstream, so at the moment I watch 24 (Jack Bauer, I love you!), Heroes (laugh, but I really like the show!), Medium, Law and Order UK (I love English detective shows), and Doctor Who. But it's only a matter of time when those shows will get canceled too.

Something I can't wait to see is newly announced Stargate series called Stargate Universe:

Am I missing something maybe, do you have a SCI-FI show to recommend?