I used to be a big fan of CNN, and I still read their news via RSS. I was on there today when I came across this item …
See the big button that invites you to click on it? What do you think it does?
Go ahead … try it. Continue reading
random dude on the “internets” disembowels Ruby on Rails …
I spent the whole weekend reading about Rails setup and deployment, discovering Ngnix + mongrels as a new Rails hosting setup option and started getting in depth with Rails with Obie Hernandez’s “The Rails Way“.
I don’t know much about the guts of PHP or Rails (that is something I am working very hard to remedy) but I was fascinated by this google group post “Rails is shitty” … Continue reading
A lesson in PHP’s design and why its deployment model “just works”
Ian Bickings’s “What PHP Deployment gets right”
This is a wonderfully written article on how PHP works, and the funny thing is that Ian seems to be more of a Python guy than anything. Needless to say, I learned a few things from reading this … Continue reading
Is rails a ghetto? developments in the ROR space.
Although I haven’t done as much work with Rails as I’d like, I follow it very closely because I like the language and the platform, plus I’m sure to write a web application in it in the next month or two.
In the last few weeks, though, there have been some interesting developments in the ROR space. Ace programmer Zed Shaw fired two broadsides against the Rails community a few weeks back titled Rails is a ghetto. [aside: there is this very interesting O’Reilly interview with Zed that might help you understand his accomplishments with Ruby]
Its an interesting read, albeit unprofessional and rather profane. Continue reading
Sites we like … npr music.
Just happened to stumble across National Public Radio (NPR) music early this morning and initially thought it was a redesign of npr’s webite.
It really is visually stunning … a truly great looking site. [Click on images to enlarge]
However there are a few problems that I’ve noticed with the homepage design
- Busy navigation: there too many navigational elements at the top of the page … (almost four different blocks of navigation) which could easily confuse users, Continue reading
Bad UI design … Facebook search box
Everyone who knows me, knows that I think that Facebook is the greatest thing since toasted bread. That is why it is ironic that it is the next subject in my focus on bad UI design.
Facebook has a search box in the upper right corner, where you can try to find long lost friends, interesting groups … etc. However, the textbox has no submit button.
How shady companies steal domain names you search for
I worked as a developer with a Search Engine Optimization firm for some time, where I learned that some shady companies are able to buy domain names that you search for online.
It wasn’t exactly clear to me how this was happening until I chanced across this excellent article on my new favorite blog
When Bad interfaces attack: Netbeans for Ruby IDE
Netbeans has become my IDE of choice for Ruby on Rails, and boy, is it an excellent choice.
However, I was opening a project I was working on when this prompt came up.
How to get rid of the Automatic updates nag “Do you want to restart your computer now?”
Just a quick note to help folks who want to get rid of the annoying restart prompt that keeps popping up after an automatic update has installed.
- Press the windows button and R (windows button + R) for the run prompt
- If you’ve done this before the command will be pre-filled … if it isn’t then type in
- net stop “automatic updates” <——— note the quotes?
Remember … you really should restart your computer after an update has installed. So make sure you do that eventually.
PS: Starting certain applications will cause the automatic update service to start running again and the nag will come back. Just Rinse and repeat 🙂
Nifty email application feature: Windows live Mail
This is a neat little feature in the new Windows Live Mail.
For those who don’t know, Windows live mail is the Microsoft’s email replacement for Outlook Express 6.
I love this feature so much because now, my email client won’t corrupt my contacts with a ton of useless entries (if you use craigslist a lot you’ll know what I mean).
Its exellent logic, because if I exchange emails with a person a couple of times, then its a pretty good bet that I want that person in my contact list but am too lazy to do it manually. Now Live Mail does it automagically, so you don’t have to … thats called an “intelligent default”. Makes for excellent application design because it “doesn’t make me think”
What would be even better would be the ability to set the threshold number manually.
jscript 5.7: Minor update to IE6’s javascript engine
Microsoft just released an update to IE6’s JavaScript engine. It was in response to problems with its (jscript 5.6) garbage collection that would cause poor performance with Large Ajaxy applications … like Gmail. It probably also helps their hotmail web ui too, since that uses ajax as well.
I would personally have liked to see more done with this update (its only a “minor” update), but I suppose you don’t want to give people a reason to hold on to IE 6 right? Hopefully this stops Feed Demon (my RSS reader) from freezing on CNN’s pages?
Read more about the update here
- Erik Arvidsson explains the reason for the update
- IE’s Jscript team announces the push out of jscript 5.7 as an automatic update
- IE’s Jscript team announces the initial release and reasons for it
- Full list of what is new in Jscript 5.7
Broken Safari for windows.
Safari for Windows (3.0.4) became my current favorite browser by (to my trained eye) slaughtering Opera in Javascript performance.
Hopefully that changes with Opera 9.25. Of late though, I’ve been having trouble with it. Safari initially broke on my Windows Laptop a few weeks ago, popping up a debugger prompt and closing immediately if I cancelled out of it.It kept running on my main workstation, however … that is until this evening, now its doing the same on my desktop.
I realize how poorly supported this browser is, because there is no place to file a bug report except from in the browser itself. Shouldn’t there be an active bug database or something for Safari on windows?
If anyone knows how to fix this please let me know … I want my super fast javascript back!
[Click on Images to see bigger versions]
Hotmail outage …. arggghhhh!
Trust microsoft to make me look stupid on the rare day that I wade in to defend them in this unfair pile-on (5 lame exuses from people still using hotmail for email).
Hotmail is inaccessible today … and I’m ripping my hair out.
The url says something about being unable to access my user data file?!?!
sigh … I have a gmail account too, BUT I can’t remember the last time they had an outage.
“Upgrading” to Windows Xp from Vista
This tongue in cheek article perfectly sums up why no one should be trying to move to windows Vista.
Warning: Geek sense of humor required to read 😛
“Upgrading” to Windows Xp from Vista
Free US and Canada zip code list including zip, city, state, latitude, longitude, and county
I started work on a web app that makes extensive use of zip codes recently.
The trouble was, I couldn’t get my hands on a good listing of all the zip codes in the United States without paying $20 or more at some fly-by-night website.
See for yourself here
Eventually … after much google-batics … I found a tiny link at the bottom of this wikipedia entry on zip-codes.
It went to this geocoding website and right there, was the link I had been looking for!
A FREE CSV file of all US ZIP codes including zip, city, state, latitude, longitude, and county.The date says it was last updated on September 20, 2007, which gives me hope that the file is frequently updated.
Many Thanks to ibegin! Enjoy!
update: The list was updated January 18th 2008