Sequel Pro: About The Right Speed For A Beta Nerd

I’m on a sysadmin-type project right now, building a new LAMP server out of a Linode VPS and Gentoo distro.  It’s pretty cool – Linode is awesome, fast as hell, and can be a great way to leave decrepit hosting services like SlowDaddy behind in the dust.

Most of my nerd friends recognize that I’m not an alpha nerd.  I don’t write code, I master arcana only grudgingly, and I am often ridiculed by alpha nerds when I ask dumb questions.  I think this makes me a beta nerd – a kind of second-class technologist, appearing to most civilians just as obtuse and scornful as an alpha, but who will never be accepted as a peer by the alphas themselves.

One of the reasons for my second-class nerd status is that I like my luxury items.  Take dealing with a MySQL database.  Working with one using the command-line interface is an irritating hassle to me.  Alterately. the web interface du jour phpMyadmin is also a bad fit.  I prefer to use a GUI client across the internet. In the nerd world, this is tantamount to wearing water wings to a swim meet, but we all have our burdens, I guess.

For the Mac, I found that the older open-source GUI client for MySQL, CocoaMySQL, was abandoned by its original writer and maintainer.  It was picked up by a couple of Australian developers and rechristened Sequel Pro.  I ran into the guys on the Freenode IRC channel #sequel-pro and helped to squash an import bug.  I have to say I’m thrilled with the program and look forward to many happy months of beta nerd query-wrangling with it.

Quit rolling your eyes, alphas.