Compile C and C++ (and Python) code for the Flash platform

Just discovered Adobe Alchemy, which allows C and C++ code to be compiled for the Adobe Flash platform. For me anyway, this shines new light on the Flash platform, as this allows apps to be developed for Flash in widely used general purpose programming languages, which in turn allow the re-use of existing libraries [...]

Project Fangorn postmortem

Now that Project Fangorn is wrapped up and on ice, its time for the postmortem.
What went wrong:

Didn’t feel like I was productive enough.
Went off on a tangent developing a prototype space based architectural abstraction over Google AppEngine’s datastore and refactored prototype code to use it.

What went right:

Produced space based architectural abstraction over Google AppEngine’s datastore [...]

Project Fangorn goes into the freezer

I’m skipping the back burner, and putting Project Fangorn on ice. I just pushed up the latest version to webgamesbyjosh.appspot.com. In that version the first of the general standing orders was implemented and I did a little of the work for the exploration feature, but the user just sees a message that it [...]

Project Fangorn Progress VI

I just deployed a new version of Project Fangorn.  This version uses the space-based architecture abstraction I created for GAE.  The only difference users will see is that the best case user command processing scenarios about about twice as fast.  Worst case is about the same as before.
While this version doesn’t have any new features, [...]

Recording HTTP requests and response for replay and comparison

I’ve been trying to locate an existing tool that will record bunch of HTTP requests I make through my browser along with the responses, and then later run through though same requests again and verify the responses are identical to what was previously recorded. I want to use such a tool to test that [...]

The AppEngine platform needs more tools

While Google’s App Engine is a platform just as things like Windows, *nix, or Sony’s PlayStations are, it is a new one that is sorely missing numerous tools that are readily available on other platforms. For example your OS has at least has command prompt and most likely a graphical file explorer that will [...]

Space-Based Architecture for AppEngine

Several posts ago I mentioned that I was waiting to see which cloud provider would be up to hosting Project Fangorn first.  In my last two posts (one, two) I talked about some of the issues with testing web apps on the GAE platform, but I didn’t mention what it was I was actually testing.
At [...]

Grey box testing web applications deployed to Google App Engine

Last post I stated:
Due GAE’s limitations on CPU time/cycles and an overall maximum limit of 10 seconds to fulfill a request a non-trivial set of unit tests will exceed the quotas if they are all run at the same time, so its necessary to run them in separate requests.
But in the two tests I’ve [...]

Unit testing web applications deployed to Google AppEngine

While the GAE SDK does provide the ability to run your web application locally, I’ve found that that the SDK’s local datastore doesn’t work precisely the same as the real one. Specially I’ve found that the local one is more permissive then the real one so its possible to get your app working locally [...]

Both App Engine and EC2 edge closer to the goal

In the two days since I posted that I was waiting to see if App Engine or an alternative got to the goal first both App Engine and EC2 have edged forward.
Yesterday Amazon announced a private beta for their own monitoring, load balancing, and automatic scaling service offering. Such included services is one of [...]