Great news, great news indeed. Couple of months ago, I started an open initiative to finally add support to MySQL for proper ordering using Croatian alphabet. We tried doing it on our own, but we needed to rewrite MySQL's Unicode Collation Algorithm, and for that we really needed help from MySQL development team. How we managed to get it? Using good old "Balkan way" - the schnapps aka. rakija black vodka. :)

My mate who was working with me on our initial implementation - Ante 'Ivoks' Karamatić (Chief executive at Init) got drunk with Kurt von Finck (Chief Community and Communications Officer for Monty Program Ab) in Dallas last week, who passed a good word to Michael ("Monty") Widenius (MySQL's original author and co-founder of MySQL AB) to listen our cries for help. Monty convinced Alexander Barkov (Lead software developer at Sun Microsystems working on MySQL) to give us little help on whole Croatian ordering issue. As a result, utf8_croatian_ci and ucs2_croatian_ci collations were created and added to MySQL 6.

After a pleasant chat with Monty and Bar, they were good enough to help us with a MySQL 5.1 patch which implements full Croatian ordering in utf8_croatian_ci and ucs2_croatian_ci collations. Woohoo! :)

But the bad news is that it will take fair amount of time before MySQL-5.6 (or 6.0 for that matter) will go GA, so one have to wait before it will be possible to download a production version of MySQL with "real" Croatian support.

If you really need Croatian support, you can try patching MySQL server as we did.

More details about the patch can be found here:

• Bar's eplanation: http://www.collation-charts.org/articles/croatian.htm
• Bar's patch for MySQL-5.1: http://www.collation-charts.org/articles/utf8_croatian_ci.diff

Since Alexander Barkov was so kind and provided a patch for MySQL 5.1, Ante created packages for Ubuntu. He also slightly (needs further testing) modified that patch so it works with MySQL 5.0. If you need this feature, go add this PPA to your sources.list: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ivoks/+archive/mysql-hr/.

After you apply the patch, you can try it out using my test database dump. If everything went ok "use croatian; SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_croatian_ci'; select rijec from test_croatian order by rijec;", should produce output like this (switch browser view to utf8).

Any feedback from the Croatian MySQL community is greatly welcomed. Please write your comments to <Alexander.Barkov[at]Sun.COM>. Thanks!

Proof of conecpet:

mysql> select version();
+-----------------+
| version()       |
+-----------------+
| 5.0.51a-hr1-log |
+-----------------+
mysql> use croatian; SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_croatian_ci'; select rijec from test_croatian order by rijec;
+--------------+
|  rijec       |
+--------------+
| Aboriđin     |
| Aboriđini    |
| Ante         |
| Branimir     |
| Cipela       |
| Čazma        |
| Ćevapčići    |
| Džak         |
| džak         |
| Džamija      |
| džamija      |
| Đak          |
| đak          |
| Đevđelija    |
| Inat         |
| Init         |
| Inozemstvo   |
| Interes      |
| Injekcija    |
| Ipsilon      |
| Kutina       |
| Livno        |
| Lovor        |
| Ljubav       |
| Ljubljana    |
| Neven        |
| Nivas        |
| Nosorog      |
| Njivice      |
| Onomatopeja  |
| Šišmiš       |
| Zagreb       |
| Žaba         |
+--------------+

For the heretics that never saw this game, here is a nice demonstration:

During the past 2 months I have tried quite a lot of iPhone games claiming to be "the best" or "really must have" and whatnot. I can tell you one thing with confidence: 99% of them turn to rubbish after just 2 minutes of gameplay.

Of them all, EDGE, turned to be the one game that shines on all points. Hell, it invents new points and shines on them too. And laughs in the face in all other iPhone games. Let me elaborate:

1: The idea
Whereas most of iPhone games are just clones of normal PC/Console games shrunk down and made ugly due to lack of true processing power, Edge goes original. Developers, Mobigame, thought of the limitations of hardware and set that as their boundary: make something that is original AND can smoothly run on all iPhone platforms. So they made an isometric world that consists of low polygon objects - cubes, added some life to it and a twist (being able to "levitate" the main cube on it's edge).

2: The feeling
What Mobigame really understands is psychology of games for iPhone. You see, the demographic of people that use iPhone the most today can be summarized into one sentence: the geeks that played games on Commodore 64 and Amiga. The people who were 15 years of age back then are now about 30ish, have cool jobs (see, all that geekines paid of - screw you captain of the football team) and run around sporting their iPhones. Edge is the perfect example of a game that was made for that demographic. It has a feeling like you are still playing Amiga game, only much smoother and fancier. It is a true future retro.

3: The graphics
There are no fancy 3D models, no shiny objects, no pixel pushed characters. Just smooth straight surfaces shaded in perfect gradients. Visually minimalistic, yet still this game provides orgasmic eye stimulation beyond measure.

4: Learning curve and skill factor
Where most iPhone games fail is learning curve. Take for example Aera, a 2.5D aeroplane game. I, a gamer, was able to complete level 2 only after about 15 minutes of play, and I decided to delete the game on level 3. It is just insane. Edge - smooth as a 20 year old whiskey. It drags you in. And then, once you comprehend how the game functions, it takes some time for you to really master it. The skill is a factor in this game, unlike most other games that once you "get" them - that's it, you can finish them by just pressing the A button fast enough.

5: Time investment
There are some great games out there. Real Racing comes to mind. However, the developers sometime go too far and make you invest at least 45 minutes per session in order to achieve anything! People do not have that amount of time! I bought Real Racing, it is impressive, and I just do not play it. I do not have a chunk of 2 hours on my hands in order to learn a track and then race it a few times in order to finish first. I guess people forget that iPhone is a telephone as well, and if someone calls you while you are racing and about to finish FIRST THE GAME JUST SHUTS DOWN AND WWHAAAAAAGGRRRAAAAAA PAIN AND SUFFERING ......

Edge session can last 5 minutes, and can be fun even after an hour of playing.

6: Re-playability
This, perhaps, is the single point where almost all iPhone games fail. Once you complete them, there is just no reason to try again. Edge provides full set of things to do on each level in order to out-do yourself and the rest of people playing it - how fast can you finish the level, can you find all the hidden pixels to collect, and keeping the death count as low as possible. Finishing fast, while collecting all the pixels and not plummeting to death can be REALLY challenging.

7: Fine touches
On one level you become a head of a robot that walks. On some levels you control by moving left/right switches that operate legs of a quad-walker. Crazy themes that go through the levels are just insane. Level design is awesome. The music is custom made to fit the retro feeling of game, yet is modern enough to listen as a regular music. Actually, Mobigame gives soundtrack as a free download. It's like ... a cherry on top of a supreme ice-cream!

Go get it now, you can thank me later.

Composed and performed by Scott Ward from with.us expirienced by all of us. :)

Among all the huge monsters that we have been building lately, there was time to create one visual identity and super small site.

Honey Moon ( Medeni Mjesec ) is all about organizing honey moon trips. Apparently, they are capable of full service organization no matter where does the couple wish to go, or if they have no idea where to go - Medeni Mjesec will conjure and think up of a supreme location suited just for them.

Sounds like fun. Now, all you need is a wife. *wink* *wink*

GPS satellites orbiting the Earth

Few days ago Google announced their free turn-by-turn GPS. The internet went crazy, especially the geeks. Getting out from the safety of your home, and all the comforts of the nearby kitchen, now that you have free turn-by-turn Google's GPS was never easier!

Following that news, Garmin's stock fell by 20%. Crazy!

Wham, let the stock price hit the floor

No, what's crazy is how the market reacts without thinking. The stock price is based on a lot of factors, but in this case the major factor is people's willingness to continue to buy Garmin's products when Google gives similar product for free (well, similar effect). And this just proves how people in general, en masse, are not very smart.

What you need to know is that Google's GPS relies on your connection to the internet in order to download maps and data. On the hardware side, yea, the software will use your device's GPS antenna and GPS constellation to detect it's location, but that location is meaningless until you see it on a map. And that data will come down via internet. On the other side is Garmin, who has maps stored inside the device, and Garmin does not rely on the internet. All the data is physically stored inside the device. This has it's drawbacks, main one being that you need to actually buy detailed maps in order to load them into device.

But think about this for a second. Better yet, check this map:

The areas marked blue on this map, so called - sea, is where there is no mobile internet coverage. I will save you the Wiki, that's 70.8%. Basically, you can forget Google's GPS there.

Then, let's get real for a moment here, and admit to ourselves: the availability of sufficiently fast mobile internet is limited to the city areas. Even inside cities (at least here in Zagreb) the 3G coverage is so-so. Even if "ordinary" mobile internet speed was sufficient to use Google's free GPS, that speed will only be sufficient to download data at walking speeds. If you are driving in your car on the highway, the combination of your speed plus lack of real broadband will lead to serious problems. Google's software will say "TURN LEFT NOW" and you will already be in the next city, not the one you wanted to go to.

And I do not see this changing in the nearby future. I just cannot imagine telecoms saying: "Yea, it is a great idea for us to invest millions of dollars in hardware just so you could have wireless broadband internet in the middle of the Amazonian forest."

Internet based GPS cannot be used in cars, cannot be used on ships and aeroplanes. It can hardly be used in the nature, trekking, biking, etc. It can be used while you walk from your door to the pub around the corner. This could be useful when you get drunk - it could probably yell at you and navigate you back home.