8 May 2007 Archives

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The area near Rocheport put out a request for volunteers to begin sandbagging. I had to take Zoe into vet today and couldn’t go. To be honest, I doubt I’d be able to keep up for that long, anyway. I can lift 50 pounds without a problem. I doubt I could do it for hours at a time.

There’s a very calm and controlled attitude about the coming “Wave of Water” as it’s being called. Some communities are vulnerable, and these are being evacuated and sandbagged. However, after the 1993 flood, this state learned its lesson. Many of the homes that were in bottom land or flood prone areas were bought out and turned into open areas where flooding won’t be a problem. Levees were raised, and floodwalls and gates installed in other areas. We could hit close to the 1993 levels on the Missouri but have no where near the damage. Water will overrun highways in certain areas, but business and homes should, for the most part, be safe. Unfortunately, crop land is going to be impacted. I would hate to be a farmer this year.

However, if we get to a certain level, and it’s borderline whether we’ll get to that level, larger communities such as St. Charles do run a real risk of extensive flood damage.

The Missouri and other rivers rising to flood levels are enough to impact the Mississippi, but it shouldn’t rise to a risk level–no more than moderate flood level, which isn’t that unusual. The levees and the floodwalls should be enough to contain it.

Our home is inland, and the only thing that could threaten it is if the Mississippi rises to the ’93 levels. Water levels that high would send water into the River Des Peres drainage channel and that could pose a real risk to our area. However, that’s not a threat with the current expected levels.

In the next few days, I’m going to try and get some photos of the rising waters, though I may run into road blocks. However, there’s so many areas where one can get close to the rivers that I doubt all will be blocked. I’ve not seen the Missouri or Mississippi at flood levels. They’re such magnificent rivers anyway, I can’t imagine how they’ll be 10 or more feet above their normal levels.

I love how the marketing folks put a spin on things every time there’s an announcement from one of the Players. This time it’s Java’s turn for the RIA space with the introduction of JavaFX. Immediately people are talking about ‘Ajax killer’. It’s no more an Ajax killer than Flash was (actually, Ajax and Flash are quite compatible), or Silverlight.

This one cracked me up:

The advantage Java-connected scripting language has over others, such as Ruby, PHP or Python, is that Java programmers can easily transfer their skills and knowledge. Moving from Java to another language like JavaScript, which is often used for Ajax applications, “is like moving to another foreign land,” Monson-Haefel said.

I used to program in Java before Sun et al bloated it out of recognition. I had no problem working with JavaScript. I guess today’s crop of Java developers isn’t very versatile.

Sun has also said it will open source JavaFX. What does that mean? Microsoft and Adobe are also talking about ‘open sourcing’ select pieces of their infrastructures. Seems to me there’s as many variations of ‘open source’ in this market as there is ice cream flavors at Baskin’s & Robbins.

JavaFX does seem to have a head start into the mobile market, but it’s behind the other players, which are at least on the street. However, it also has a built-in audience, as there is a lot of Java developers. Of course, same could be said about Silverlight and Adobe’s Flex.

I’ve not found, though, that companies that use Java for their applications are the most forward looking and ‘on the edge’ development environments. In my opinion (note I said, ‘in my opinion’), Java is the most conservative web development environment. Web Sphere, nuff said.

One thing for sure: RIA is the hot market this year. Adjust your resumes accordingly.