Posts filed under 'Uncategorized'

andlinux = Fail (rant)

Its admirable what they’re trying to do, but I installed the software and couldn’t get it to run. (Strange “could not connect” errors)

After screwing around with their rather unhelpful help thread and losing 2 hours of my life I gave up and uninstalled it. Don’t waste your time like I did, until they at least figure out how to make the darned thing work right out the box.

Thats probably why I hadn’t heard about them until a few days ago, and then, entirely by accident.

Add comment August 22nd, 2008

Use BREAD not CRUD

From Paul m. Jones

“I don’t recall where I first heard the term BREAD; it stands for “browse, read, edit, add, delete”. That covers more of what common web apps do, including the record listings. It even sounds nicer: “crud” is something icky, but “bread” is warm and fulfilling. That’s why I tend to use the term BREAD instead of CRUD …”

I like BREAD.
:)

Add comment August 20th, 2008

Ginormous external hard drive storage with drobo

Had to write a blog post on this …

Drobo allows you hotswap SATA hard drives in and out of it.
Just pop it open (yes … while its plugged in) and switch out hard drives as you wish.

It has 4 bays and can hold up to 16TB of Data. It magically writes and rewrites your data across all the drives it is using at the time … scary good eh?

Runs USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 (oooooh) … definitely up my ‘most coveted items’ list, right next to the Macbook Air (still searching for a sugar mommy to help out with that one).

Watch the video intro on Drobo

enter the code ” krose31 ” to get $100 off your drobo

Add comment August 20th, 2008

Quote of the day - nothing wrong with doing nothing

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing nothing as long as it is done in moderation.

— From Freelance Switch
Become More Efficient By Simplifying Your Life

Add comment August 15th, 2008

Frameworks vs. Libraries in PHP (why I choose frameworks)

David Otton (who I’ve never met) has an interesting take on the old Framework vs. libraries debate, that I identify with.

I went through the same struggle (in my head) months ago. However, after having that internal struggle that David went through, I came out on the side of frameworks.

Why?
- Because frameworks allow me to get web applications up very quickly
- I don’t have to spend time figuring out or refining database access, templating or any of the other ‘plumbing’ that you have to do on most code projects. In fact there is a hobby site, that I wrote with my own custom code … and I haven’t made updates to it in months, because I have to entirely refactor the codebase to do the new things I want. If I had written it in cake (which I plan to port it over to). I’d have no such problems.
- I don’t have to completely relearn my code base after weeks away from it (part of the problem above too)
- Most frameworks include libraries of their own that you can use. In a recent project that I’m working on, there is a twitter gem for Rails that probably saved me (and the client) about 20 - 30 hours of coding, testing and bug fixing

What the article did tell me, though, is that developers the world over (especially PHP) developers are used to writing code from scratch. Designing, creating and implementing new ‘plumbing’ is a big part of what we do.

In any given framework, you’re going to like about 70% - 85% of what it does and (probably)absolutely hate the rest of it. Giving yourself over completely to convention-over-configuration framework like Cakephp when you don’t agree 100% with it is a big step for most developers. One that quite a few developer shy away from.

I think though, that if you find a reason to stick with it, like I did. You will find that the benefits of doing things with a framework will eventually overcome objections you might have to not having the framework do things … your way.

Add comment August 12th, 2008

New Netbeans release - version 6.5 Milestone 1

New in this release is support for PHP

There is a new feature list here

A couple of interesting Rails enhancements

About to check it out.

Add comment August 4th, 2008

Safari on windows uses almost 500MB of Memory!!!

Insane!

Safari on windows uses almost 500MB of Memory!!!

Add comment May 3rd, 2008

Getting started with mod_rails/mod_rails tutorial

I have been unable to play around with mod_rails (the apache module that allows you run Rails apps in apache) and write a “mod_rails 101″ type blog post.

However, I came across this excellent mod_rails tutorial on how to get up and running.

Just thought I should share.

getting started with mod_rails tutorial

Add comment April 16th, 2008

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

3 comments December 14th, 2007


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