April 2012
3 posts
Speed up the Dock animation in Mac OS
ben:
I don’t really use that at many defaults write terminal commands, but I read about this one recently and I like it a lot.
If you hide your dock, you can speed up the hide/show animation by using the following command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.5;killall Dock
This will make the animation much faster. You can also get rid of it completely,...
Some followup on disabling the dynamic pager in OS...
Some additional uncategorized thoughts on disabling the dynamic pager:
This is not a magic bullet. Anything that actually needs to use the disk is still going to take place at disk speeds. But it should take a whole lot of load off of the disk.
It’s evident that not everyone is seeing the problems I’ve been seeing, but there are enough people who have to make me think there’s a...
Something is deeply broken in OS X memory...
I’ve been doing some investigation with Perry Metzger into what appears to be a huge problem with memory management in Lion (I, but not everybody, have seen this going back to Snow Leopard, though it’s worse in Lion. This may have something to do with the fact that I was running the 64-bit kernel on SL and most other people weren’t.)
The main symptoms that we’ve...
March 2012
1 post
3 tags
Two things that really helped speed up my Mac (and...
In my quest to speed up my Mac, I learned about two utilities that I wish someone had shown me years ago: say hello to ‘purge’ and ‘fs_usage’.
1) The absolute slowest thing a modern computer can do is hit the disk. fs_usage shows you all of the disk accesses in realtime, so you can have a look at what’s using the disk(s). It’s a lot of information and there are...
February 2012
1 post
2 tags
Fair Labor Association Begins Inspections of...
Apple starts inspections of factories in China. It seems like this sort of thing was actually Apple’s plan for a while. Remember a few years ago when Apple hardware started arriving with tracking information starting in Shenzen? Why do that unless you want to highlight where all of the gadgets are coming from? Prior to that, most Americans had never heard of Shenzen or Foxconn, and now...
December 2011
1 post
4 tags
Horrible disk performance on Lion with external...
I’ve been plagued by poor disk performance on my Mac Pro for the past few weeks - spinning beach balls when changing applications, long delays to show directory listings in Finder, and general system slowness. Frustratingly, it seemed to be correlated directly to the number of external drives I had attached, and sometimes showed an inverse correlation with the speed of the drives (i.e.:...
October 2011
2 posts
4 tags
How to set up iMessage to work with multiple iOS...
iMessage is a great replacement for SMS on iOS5, but it’s not obvious how to set it up to work with the same conversations on multiple iOS devices. I’d thought that this wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t get messages in the right place until I made these changes. You’ll need to do this on all of your iOS devices. Only the iPhone is pictured here - the iPad setup is...
3 tags
Apple just threw a huge bone to existing iPhone 4...
This is a great example of Tim Cook’s operational brilliance. Apple just threw a huge bone to existing iPhone4 users in reselling their old 16 or 32GB phones by discontinuing those models. There’s going to be a large demand for them in the secondary market by people who want to mid-range upgrade to an iPhone 4 but want more than 8GB.
August 2011
1 post
3 tags
Impressions of Lion
I’ve now upgraded a few machines to Lion, and I’m pretty ridiculously happy with it overall (the main exception being the removal of Front Row, which I used all the time on my media center Mac Mini, which has caused me to downgrade that machine back to Snow Leopard).
Some random thoughts in no particular order:
My own personal feelings on the matter of natural scrolling are that I...
July 2011
1 post
3 tags
My friend Kate's iPad got flattened like a book.
My friend Kate’s iPad got run over on the highway. It got flattened like a book and separated into layers.
In her words: ‘The iPad2 was 3 weeks old and Ercu put it on the roof of the car and forgot about it. We found it 2 miles down the road, 2 days later. He said “there it is” and I said, that’s not it, that’s a catalog. I couldn’t believe it —...
June 2011
1 post
2 tags
Apple _is_ iOS.
This hit me the other day. iOS and the app structure is modeled after the way Apple itself is organized. (I don’t have very much inside information on how the teams at Apple are structured, but from what I know, the metaphor feels right. I’d welcome additional examples that illustrate the point further.)
Small teams working on one thing at a time with constrained resources == a single...
May 2011
2 posts
Every project needs a graveyard
Developers don’t want to delete code because it might be used down the road. Every project I work on these days gets a “graveyard” folder in the main source tree where people can put code they don’t need any more but don’t want to delete forever or lose track of in the repository history.
I find that this makes a HUGE difference in keeping the source files cleaner....
All I want is a compact digicam that takes good...
Here’s what I’ve been looking for in a compact camera:
1) f/1.4 fixed 50mm equivalent lens.
2) 8mp APS-C sized sensor.
3) No noticeable shutter lag.
4) Aperture priority mode when shooting without flash.
5) Shutter priority mode when shooting with fill flash.
6) Fast autofocus.
7) Completely retractable lens, pocket-sized form factor (elph-ish would be nice, but slightly larger...
April 2011
3 posts
How to swap two variables without using a third...
Method 1:
> string1 = "sssss"
=> "sssss"
> string2 = "ttttt"
=> "ttttt"
> string1, string2 = string2, string1
=> ["ttttt", "sssss"]
> string1
=> "ttttt"
> string2
=> "sssss"
Method 2:
> string1 = "sssss"
=> "sssss"
> string2 = "ttttt"
=> "ttttt"
> string1 = [string1, string2]
=> ["sssss", "ttttt"]
> string2 = string1[0]
=>...
3 tags
A recent list of iOS apps I like
Facebook - iPhone only. On the iPad, I really like Social, but the authors stopped developing it and pulled it from the store. None of the other iPad clients even comes close, though Friendly is passable.
Dropbox
DuckDuckGo - front-end to duckduckgo search. Not necessary, but convenient to segregate search from general browsing
Omnifocus (nice on the iphone, stellar on the iPad)
Omnigraffle...
3 tags
A short ruby script to pull your twitter followers...
#!/bin/env ruby
require 'twitter'
username = 'fields'
def get_cursor_results(action, items, *args)
result = []
next_cursor = -1
until next_cursor == 0
begin
t = Twitter.send(action, args[0], args[1], {:cursor => next_cursor})
result = result + t.send(items)
next_cursor = t.next_cursor
rescue Twitter::BadRequest
puts "Bad request, waiting an hour to see...
February 2011
1 post
4 tags
What's really important about hashbangs -- #! #...
Recently, a few large sites have been redesigned to use a #! separator in their url structure, notably twitter and the entire gawker suite. In short, it lets them serve their entire site as one single HTML page with a chunk of javascript, and the browser handles loading the actual content of the page from the string after the #! separator. This has been causing a fairly loud uproar in the internet...
January 2011
1 post
Feedback to Skype on the new v5 beta
Dear Skype:
I very much dislike most of the changes in the Skype 5 beta - nearly everything I do with Skype has gotten more tedious. Some features that were poor in earlier versions have gotten worse.
Some examples:
1) I often keep many many chats open at once. The interface for how to create a new ad hoc chat with multiple participants is completely inscrutable. I almost _NEVER_ want to...
December 2010
3 posts
2 tags
What's the rationale for null-terminated strings →
1 tag
25 tips for intermediate git users →
Very helpful.
October 2010
2 posts
2 tags
How to use MongoDB to collect summary stats
When you have a lot of disparate jobs running in lots of separate processes across many different machines, it’s really helpful to collect various stats from them about how they’re doing. I’ve found mongodb to be very helpful for this. For my purposes, storing daily counts is sufficient and keeps the collection from getting too big.
The thing that makes this particularly easy...
Piping command line output to the clipboard on OSX
Apparently, you can pipe output to the pbcopy binary, and it will put the output of the command directly on the clipboard. Useful!
I have a ruby script that dynamically generates my email signature to include links to a few of my recent posts, and it’s really handy to be able to copy this directly to the clipboard instead of having to go through a file.
...
August 2010
3 posts
Here's a little bookmarklet for turning github...
rdoc.info is a great resource for seeing the documentation of ruby projects. Here’s a little transforming bookmarklet you can click on while on the main page of any github project to take you to the rdoc.info page for that project.
Just drag this link to your bookmarks bar:
rdoc lookup
Depending on your browser’s security settings, you might have to edit the text of the address...
Maniacal Rage: The Problem with Facebook's... →
Here’s the thing about Facebook that really gets under my skin: They are slowly incorporating the features from every other independent web application on the internet. This is not inherently a problem—companies get bigger and they begin to have the resources to widen their feature set—the issue…
Except that Facebook has never competed on feature set - they’ve been very careful to...
3 tags
Converting Pages files to HTML
For some reason, Apple removed the “Save As…. HTML” option from recent versions of Pages, and wants you to go through iWeb instead. I found that to be fairly cumbersome, and iWeb seems to want you to make a whole formatted site instead of just dealing with an individual page. I tried converting through .doc or .pdf as well, but the results were pretty terrible. The best solution...
June 2010
1 post
2 tags
Some iPad apps I like
For connecting to my home Mac, I use Desktop Connect outside the house, because it’s got ssh proxy support. iTap VNC is a nicer client, and I use that while I’m in the house. iSSH is a decent ssh client, and is supposed to have VNC support but I’ve never been able to get it working.
Netflix - stream videos and manage your queue
AirVideo - install a server on your Mac and...
May 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Eye-One Display 2 is much better than the Spyder...
It’s certainly possible that the Spyder 3 is worlds better than the Spyder 2 was, but I recently replaced my ailing Spyder 2, and decided to try an Eye-One Display 2 instead. The Spyder software has never worked really well under Snow Leopard, it’s always taken a pretty long time to run. With multiple monitors, that adds up. After I took the Eye-One out of the box, I immediately ran...
1 tag
How Google should approach Social
After several false starts, Google is looking to turn over a new leaf and hire a brand new “head of social” to define their social strategy. Yes, I have a lot of critical things to say about Google, but I think it’s an interesting exercise to think about how they could unseat Facebook. So here are some random unorganized thoughts about how Google should approach their social...
April 2010
2 posts
1 tag
HTML5 presentation in HTML5 →
Nicely done.
2 tags
A brief review of interesting things about the...
Here’s my brief review of the iPad so far:
1) There are some annoying but real hardware limitations. I don’t expect them to be fixed until the next rev, roughly a year from now. Notably, the device needs more RAM than it has. This may be mitigated through software revisions to be more clever in using what’s there, but it’s a ding. The battery life is awesome, but it has...
March 2010
12 posts
Good article on technical aspects of lens... →
Tim's Daft Junk: Tuesday Night Tech - MongoDB UI... →
This week I’m focusing on UI options for administering MongoDB. Sure, you could use the javascript command shell “mongo” from the command line, but a lot of individuals out there are churning out viable options for administering the popular document-oriented database. All of these tools are…
3 tags
You're not looking at the iPad the right way
It seems pretty obvious to me that the right way to view the iPad is in relation to the Mac and the iPhone, existing in an ecosystem where they can each seamlessly be peripherals of each other.
About eight years ago, I wrote this in reference to the way in which the burgeoning market of personal computer electronics were starting to work with each other and play off of each other:
‘I...
Letter to Mozilla - don't kill HTML5 video →
I strongly agree with this. Mozilla is pushing an inferior competing standard because it’s open. Openness is an important feature, but it’s not the only one, and I agree that this won’t have the desire effect of increasing openness but will instead drive people more towards proprietary solutions. In other words, people will use flash for video, and when they do, they’ll be...
3 tags
Something great about installing ruby from source
I discovered something cool today - if you build ruby from source, you have the option to install additional components after the fact, pretty easily and independently.
For example, I’ve often lamented that some of the builds I’ve done didn’t install readline support, and I didn’t really realize how to add that. As it turns out, it’s pretty trivial.
In your source...
In defense of the App Store (Why Apple has sold...
While the entire tech community is ranting and raving about the limitations imposed on developers for the iPhone, Apple is busy providing the first actual usable computing platform for everybody else. Think of the iPhone (and the iPad, by extension) as an omelet made by Apple. There are a lot of things that can go into the omelet to make it delicious, but you don’t get to put, say, rainbow...
Good article on amazon's customer-focus strategy →
2 tags
The Best Jobs in America
I’m obligated to post this, because for years the best thing I could think of to put on my business cards was “Systems Engineer”.
http://www.focus.com/images/view/7362/
Good articles on iPad UI challenges
Two good articles on iPad UI design complexity: http://mattgemmell.com/2010/03/05/ipad-application-design http://camerondaigle.com/v1/articles/podcamp_nashville_2010_presentation/
1 tag
Hash manipulations in ruby
I was looking around for an easy way to sum the individual elements in a hash without referencing the individual keys. It turns out that there’s an easy way to do this - just pass a block to hash.merge and you get access the key, old, and new values. From there, summing the keys is easy:
>> hash1
=> {:one=>5, :two=>10, :three=>3}
>> hash2
=> {:four=>4,...
2 tags
When using AWS Security Groups, don't forget self
This was frustrating, and maybe I missed it in the documentation, but I didn’t see it anywhere - when you have two machines in the same AWS Security Group, the assumption would be that they can interchange network traffic freely between them (at least, that was my assumption), but they can’t. If you want them to be able to talk to each other, you have to add the security group to...
5 tags
Auto-starting mongodb at boot time on OSX
This really goes for starting any daemon at boot, but here’s a specific example for mongodb. Make a file and call it something like “org.mongodb.start.plist”:
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.mongodb.start</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
...
February 2010
1 post
3 tags
Two quiet iPhone upgrades
Subscribed calendars will now sync directly via MobileMe, so there’s no reason not to use this now. Switching over from direct usb syncing to MobileMe syncing was painless, and it seamlessly deleted my synced subscribed calendars and pulled down new ones.
Find my iPhone now works from another iPhone, instead of just a desktop browser:...
January 2010
1 post
1 tag
What I really want out of iPhone OS 4 is...
It’s occurred to me that my main usage pattern for the iPhone is to have some app open, and then have to quit it to go do something else for a minute (look something up, respond to a messge, etc…), and then go right back to what I was doing. I don’t care as much about having apps run persistently in the background (though I won’t say no if apple comes up with a really...
December 2009
1 post
"We are using MySQL, help save it" →
This is an impassioned plea from Monty (creator of MySQL) to help ensure better terms guaranteeing the future of MySQL in the acquisition of Sun by Oracle. If you have any stake in this, emails need to be sent to the EC commission ASAP. Read the full post.
“Oracle claims that it would take good care of MySQL but let’s face the facts: Unlike ten years ago, when MySQL was mostly just...
November 2009
1 post
5 tags
SSD as a boot drive on Mac
SSD drives are still really expensive for the big ones, but the 64GB
ones can now be had for $130 (after rebate). Excluding my homedir,
this is plenty for system + apps, so I replaced the boot drive in my
Mac Pro with a 64GB...
October 2009
3 posts
3 tags
Sidekick users have probably lost all of their...
This is just a huge disaster. The inability to sync with my desktop and keep my own backups was actually one of the big reasons I didn’t keep the Sidekick I bought seven years ago.
http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/?category.id=Sidekick
3 tags
How not to expand a table with random test data
Let’s say you have a table with 20 million rows in it. It’s performing fine at the moment, but you want to see what will happen when it grows to 40 million rows. You might think that adding 20 million rows of random data to a test copy of your db would probably be best accomplished with raw sql, and you might be tempted to do something like this:
insert ignore into mytable (id, name)...