Hula Server: Web based calendaring and email.
Hula Server: Web based calendaring and email.
Long story short, connectivity to the server hosting my blog is having issues. I’ve been assigned another IP address in the mean time, so that could at least get to it. I took this time to upgrade WordPress 1.5. The new default theme is certainly nicer than the old one, but it still has many problems. Eventually I’ll work up a template closer to what I had before.
In the meantime, access to my blog will likely be spotty until these issues get worked out.
Memory-based filesystems using md(4): Little rc.d script for FreeBSD 5.x to make using md a bit easier.
Burning through Napster’s collection, free: If you are surprised by this then you haven’t been paying attention.
Yahoo! Search Tips for Webmasters: Saving Bandwidth: Some great tips on what you can do minimize the impact Slurp (Yahoo’s web spider) has your site. This is a great example of what Yahoo and Google should be putting up on their blog from time to time. You could certainly have found this information else where, but there is something to be said for getting it straight from the horses mouth.
Flickr Central Color Picker: The folks over at Flickr have been doing great stuff with Flash (via JeremY!).
pgpool: Pool connections to back end PostgreSQL servers. Looks like it has recently added some replication and fail over abilities also.
Two-Finger Scrolling with Pre-2005 PowerBooks: Ha Ha! Looks like my PowerBook should be able to support this hacked up mouse drive to add two-finger scrolling (which the new PowerBook and iBooks have). I’ll have to give this a try at some point.
MySQL: Upgrading MySQL 4.0 to 4.1: Somethings to keep in might that might get your burned after this upgrade.
Why We Use PostgreSQL For Web Application Development: Nice little write on why PostgreSQL should be your choice for web apps.
Unobtrusive Javascript: Nice guide for how Javascript should be used. It certainly should never be depended on. Oh, unless you are Google Maps (via Keith).
How to make a Beastie flag: This guy had his mom do a (huge) cross stitch of the BSD daemon. Wow.
Calorie King: Look up the depressing information about your favorite foods.
If you’ve been around programming for even a little bit you’re likely to have seen references to JavaBeans. In an effort to provide a similar remote method invocation (RMI) for PHP there is now a phpBeans project. I’m not entirely convinced that this is the way to go when compared to SOAP/XML-RPC/REST, but it an interesting additional option.
One of the things that could really propel something like phpBeans is the ability to make use of it in other languages. There is already a Ruby client, but I’m thinking that adding Java, Perl and Python clients would cover enough ground that many more people would be interested in it. In that respect SOAP/XML-RPC/REST has already beat the beans idea because both sides (client and server) can be in any language. That sort of flexibility certainly isn’t free, but it sure can be nice.
So I still haven’t come to any major conclusion on the idea of phpBeans. If I get a change I’ll try it out and see if it is something I want to pursue more seriously. It certainly has possibilities.
The world of benchmarks is fraught with peril, those who enter are likely to get flamed, not matter what the results are. I had already prepared myself for the worst when I saw the title of Using MySQL to benchmark OS performance on NewsForge the other day. After reading through it, and part 2, Comparing MySQL performance, I was pleasantly surprised. At the end of the article I got the feeling that Tony Bourke had made an honest attempt at testing MySQL 4.0.22 on the following operating systems:
While there are things that I’d recommend doing differently, it certainly seems like Tony did a good job to trying to make this as balanced as possible. Perhaps my biggest beef with his methods was the decision to run all of the tests locally, instead over the network. To his credit he does a good job explaining why he ended up not doing so, but that doesn’t change the fact that for those building apps (web or otherwise), don’t usually run that application on the same system that is running MySQL.
The results of the test still feel a little bit odd. I can’t really hold this against Tony though, I’m sure he was working on a deadline and if you put off publishing forever then why bother doing it in the first place. That said, I suspect that there is more that could be done if more time and resources were available. Some of the other obvious possibilities include using MySQL built for that OS (rpm’s, BSD ports, etc), looking at additional file system tweaks and differences (does Linux still default to async fs mounts?) and trying different versions of MySQL (4.1 just went into production, but 5.x betas have been around for awhile too).
Google Donating Bandwidth And Servers To Wikipedia: This will probably make many people uncomfortable, perhaps rightly so. It isn’t official yet, but it is being considered.
Carly Leaves HP: Well, she definitely evoked opinions from people.
Mapping Google: Some dissection of the new Google Maps.
flickrGraph: Flash app that allows your browse flickrSpace, using one person as a starting point. Neat stuff.
Firefox Got Yahoo!: The Yahoo! toolbar is now available as a FireFox plugin. Personally I’ve never been excited by any of the features provided by these sorts of things. Perhaps I’m missing out.
Alter Table Row Background Colors Using JavaScript: Easy solution for making static stables have alternating row colors.
After playing the new Google Maps for a few days I still think it is very cool. But I want more. Specifically I want to be able to have more of the things I search for plotted on Google Maps. I have a couple of friends that I use Google to look up phone numbers for. I know, it sounds lazy, and it is. At any rate, I want to be able to see those phone book search results come up on Google Maps. Another search I do from time to time is to see what homes are selling for in my zip code. Right now I’m using MetroList MLS to do these, I’d like the option of seeing the results plotted on Google Maps. To go one step even further, for general web searches, figure out which pages contain ICBM info and optionally plot them on Google Maps.
Now that I think about, what I want is an open, extensible interface to Google Maps. This interface should allow me to feed it arbitrary addresses and associated details with each address and have it plotted on Google Maps. Imagine having some sort of XML-RPC/SOAP/REST interface to dump locations into a Google Map results page. It could simply return a url that would then display a Google Map with all of my assorted locations and info on it. That would be cool.
A word or two about the driving directions feature in Google Maps. I like the detail and popups above the map, although I’d like to see the popups move along the route instead of just displaying at the beginning and end. Just for kicks I asked it to provide me with a route from Sacramento, CA to New York, NY, which it did. Although I think it was being a little generous when it thought I should be able to make the 2,830 mile trip in 39 hours. Could I really average 72.5 mph on that drive?
UPDATE 9:00pm 11 Feb 2005: Looks like hacking Google Maps could get us part of the way there.
Can it be true? It appears that FreeBSD is going to run a design contest for a new logo. After reading through the announcement text it looks like this could be real.
I’ve been using FreeBSD for more than seven years and I have seen the discussion about people not liking the FreeBSD daemon come ago more times than I can remember. I bet you JKH is getting a good laugh out of this in his office over at Apple :-)
UPDATE 2:30pm 09 Feb 2005: There is already a petition to save the daemon mascot. As of now it has 325 signatures.
UPDATE: 5:50am 10 Feb 2005: The logo contest site now indicates that they aren’t ready to do an official announcement.
