It’s been a while, this I know. Please believe it’s not that I’ve left the land of my blog, more that I haven’t had the time. So continue to stay tuned as I will try to add new content shortly, sure to wow you. Yes, wow you.
20
Apr 10
Command Line Trash Can (Deferred Deletes)
I’m a Mac. I’m also an Ubuntu. I’m even a PC. In each of these, I have a pretty interface that lets me drag and drop just about anything to the Trash. Albeit an old, old feature that hardly ever comes in handy; when it does, it’s priceless. The thing is, I hardly ever use my GUI. Ever. I ride the command line like a drunken cowboy trying to prove something to the carneys. Given I really adore the concept of the GUI Trash deferred delete paradigm, I’ve added it to my command-line recipe book, giving it to me; GUI or not.
Continue reading →
19
Apr 10
Simple Approaches to Scaling Any Website
No matter the site, the traffic, the scope or content, a tip of the hat should always be gestured to the scale it needs to support. Not to say any effort should be put forth to make it the most scalable site or webapp in the universe, but certainly a little thought is allowed. Of course, I’ve said plenty of times before and will continue to: don’t fall into the trap of premature optimization. It’s dumb. And in most cases, developing to solve existing scalability issues is a business case most people are willing to take as it will (generally) save time, money, sanity and morale in the long run. Regardless, I also believe there are simple simple steps everyone setting up a site can take. Not as a premature optimization, but as a logical, default method of installing your web tier to ensure it’s optimized out of the box. Particularly when it’s combining different pieces of proven technology and enabling their features to prevent needless overhead, it’s no longer premature, it’s simply expected.
16
Apr 10
Extensible Shell Environment Across Your Servers
One of my biggest frustrations any time I move to a new server: migrating to a new data center, changing jobs or simply adding new servers somewhere in between is keeping my customized shell environment while giving each server a bit of customizability. Of course, in a linux environment, we have our coveted .bashrc that will do this. But what has helped me through this process time and time again is building my .bashrc to allow for server-specific extensions. Here’s how I’ve done it. Continue reading →
13
Apr 10
Opera’s Out, Safari Never Left
As any geek with an iPhone paying attention to any blog within an arms reach, you probably know by now Opera has been released as what can be considered a direct competitor to the iPhone’s native browser, Safari. And as any self respecting geek, like myself, you gave it a spin. I wanted to like it. I wanted to love it. I gave it a fair shot. I browsed. I clicked. I hated (almost) every part of it. Here are some of the key points of why I deleted Opera in under 30 minutes.