Author Archive
Google+ vs Facebook
Posted by Lars Schenk in Open Source, Video on Juli 1st, 2011
Now that the world is seeing the fight “Google+ vs Facebook” I think it’s time to remember the outstanding speech from Eben Moglen. Not to forget:
“Don’t expect Google to be a competitor – that’s a plattform…”
Eben Moglen – Freedom in The Cloud
I’ve become a frustrated Apple fanboy?
Posted by Lars Schenk in Apple on November 25th, 2010
I’m working on an early 2008 MacBook Pro. After 1 year it developed problems with the touchpad and keyboard. I let it repair at Apple in 2009/02 with new topcase, keyboard and touchpad. It worked fine for some month. Problems came back. See my full story about the frozen keyboard and touchpad here (thx for the many comments – it’s the most searched & found blog article at my site).
Now (2010/11) I suffer the problem very often again. I can only work with external keyboard and touchpad. Nothing that you can find on the internet to adress this problem (SMC/ PRAM Reset, the “ribbon” trick) has worked for me. And the crazy thing is there is no way to just “restart” the driver for the touchpad. It should be possible – but I havn’t found anything. It should be so easy to make it work again with just a command.
Apple has repaired already and the problem came back! I think there is no better prove that this MBP generation has a serious hardware design flaw. And there seem to be hardware flaws in Apple products (flickering displays, 1 gen iPhone with not working delete keys, etc.) I wonder why Steve Jobs is so proud about having software and hardware coming from the same hands. It does not make anything better.
I had problems with Windows, too – that was one small reason for switching to Apple in 2005. But it’s not quite better with Apples hardware+software model. Now I’m “locked in” (by my own choice: I will not go back with the desktop to Windows or Ubuntu/Debian. I LOVE OS X for so many reasons) and so I need to upgrade to my next MBP – but I really fear to buy new hardware from Apple again. After all my research I have seen how many problems are there even with the latest Apple products… I totally lost my confidence in the shiny Apple world of “good hardware and software” out of one hand.
Buying from Apple means to pay premium prices. I’m willing to do so – but I expect to have best hardware and best service. Maybe It’s just me who had bad luck? Make your research – the forums are full of problems like these. I.e. flickering displays, non functioning keyboards even on iPhones (the Delete key problem). Antenna-gate etc. Countless. (Yes I know I don’t have the full picture – I need to know how many percentage of customers face problems like I have – but take into account that I’m frustrated at the moment of writing…) If I could decide today I would not buy my Hardware from Apple again. But there is no choice because Apple wan’t OS X to run only on own hardware – that’s the main drawback in the Apple universe…
So I’ll pull my credit card with the next upgrade of the MBP line and hope I’ll have better hardware next time. And guess what? I’ll take Apple care for 3 years just because of murphy to make sure my next MBP will flawless for at least 3 years.
PS: My wife’s unibody MacBook seems to have no problems. Maybe there is hope…
CakePHP, a visual history: 0 – 1.3.0
Posted by Lars Schenk in Open Source, Video on Mai 7th, 2010
Graham Weldon made this fast-paced visual history of the CakePHP repository from 16th May 2005 up until close to the release a few days back for CakePHP 1.3.0. The result is nothing short of awesome.
See in HD and fullscreen!
Original blog post here.
Video: Node.js by Ryan Dahl
Posted by Lars Schenk in Open Source, Video on Februar 19th, 2010
I recently read about “Node.js might be the most exciting single piece of software in the current JavaScript universe.” and “Node’s goal is to provide an easy way to build scalable network programs.” Sounds great. With this talk from Ryan Dahl, I’ve got a bigger picture:
Cached json (or xml) view with CakePHP
Posted by Lars Schenk in tech-recipes on Dezember 23rd, 2009
While implementing caching for view as descriped in the cookbook i stumbled upon some glitches:
First I found out the best way to avoid problems with routing urls beeing not cached - especially when using Router::mapResources() - is to enable the caching per action in the controller like this:
function view($id = null) {
$this->cacheAction = "10 minutes";
// more stuff
}
The next problem was that cached views don't retain document mime type (xml, json, etc.). The first request works correctly (uncached request), but the second request will come back as text/html. You can find a more detailed description of the problem here.
I got an advice to enable callbacks for my views but that slows down and defeats the purpose of the cache. My approach now is to use a layout like this:
With the header('Content-type: text/x-json'); embedded in the nocache tags, it works fast and returns the correct mime type.
- Development-Server XDebug enabled, APC enabled, View cache disabled:
Requests per second: 1.64 [#/sec] - Development-Server XDebug enabled, APC enabled, View cache enabled (files):
Requests per second: 29.04 [#/sec] - Development-Server XDebug disabled, APC enabled, View cache enabled (files):
Requests per second: 95.66 [#/sec]
Further reading
8 Ways to Speed Up the Performance of CakePHP Apps.
Store View Cache in APC or Memcached.
Is Chromium OS the perfect netbook OS?
Posted by Lars Schenk in Miscellaneous, Video on November 19th, 2009
After Googles launch of their own programming language "go" (which looks like a polished c++ meets pyhton) the next big thing is Googles attempt to re-think what operating systems (targeting netbooks) should be: Google Chromium OS. I don't yet follow the idea of no native apps "on the desktop". So I'm exited about Apple's plan for this netbook (or tablet-) market. As a developer I welcome every platform that allows users to access webapps in a more convenience way. And this is pretty much the best attempt for the old idea of a "network only computer": Network Computer Reloaded.
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