CSSEdit – killer css application
I've never really been a big fan of specialized css editing applications, always preferring to stick with a standard editor and some browser plugin like firebug. Now I realize this was just because I never came across a really powerful editor, at least not as powerful and yet friendly as CSSEdit from MacRabbit .
So how does it work? You just load a local file or remote site and open associated CSS files. At this point you have a choice to open a remote css or override it by a local file. Thats it, now you switch to X-Ray mode and study the structure of your page, which is rendered using WebKit engine. All the changes you make in css file are reflected in browser window immediately.
The only downside of this tool is that developers want you to pay for it, but I must say that mere 30 euro is nothing for such a handy tool which would save you lots of time if you seriously do web development.
Why JRuby?
Java is now everywhere. But not everyone knows that Java is not only a language but also a virtual machine. You can create a compiler for virtually any programming language to compile it to java bytecode. Actually a few projects do that! There is Jython for Python and JRuby for ruby.
But why bother? I've been asking myself exactly the same question. Why bother with running any language under java VM when it has an interpreter of its own. Andreas gives a nice overview of the candy stuff you will get from JRuby in his blog post "Why I'm starting to like JRuby even though I dislike Java"
Thats how you deal with high traffic on your forum!
As one can guess release of new versions of VLC brought a huge traffic load to their forum. That's quite expectable if you remember when was the last time the released a big update. So how do you deal with it? Apparently VLC team found an ultimate solution to high load on the support team - take down the forum!
If you try and go to http://forum.videolan.org/ right now this is what you will see:
The forum has been disabled due to high load during the VLC 0.9.3 release. It will be back once things settle. Long live VLC!
CloudStalker: sorry ... (dionoea & j-b)
DropBox – ultimate solution for online file storage.
DropBox is, IMHO, one of those "killer" services. For 0$ they provide you 2Gb of online storage, which can be used both for keeping personal files, photos, archives or sharing something with the world. Anything uploaded there in the Public folder has public link which you can send to friends or post on your blog. Alternatively, you can share file with certain people only.
But what makes this a killer service, you may ask? There seems to be a whole bunch of services like that available now. What makes DropBox unique is its interface. They provide applications for Unix/Mac/Windows platforms which allows you to seamlessly synchronize a folder on your hard disk with the online storage. It even works from behind an http proxy! Of course if you want, you can access your storage space via a web interface, which is a descent Web 2.0 application.
Personally I find this service awesome! Its not only feature complete but also extremely fast. I've been trying Apple's MobielMe service with iDisk but the I just canceled my trial as the speed was unacceptable! With DropBox I easily get 200 kb/s.
Enough words, just go to http://getdropbox.com and try it yourself. As I said, its free!
Testing your site in Internet Explorer under Linux or Mac.
When you develop a web site in 9 cases out of 10 you have to ensure that it works and looks properly in all major browsers. While Firefox and Opera is available on all platforms, testing your browser under Internet Explorer might be a bit tricky if your development happens on Linux or Mac. If you are a "happy owner" of a windows license - fair enough, go and in stall it under virtual machine. But what if you don't have a license and aren't quite up to breaking the laws on pirate bay?
Even if you have a copy of windows there is one thing you have to keep in mind - the way Internet Explorer renders pages varies not only between browsers versions but even between OS versions! So, ideally, we want to test our websites in a native environment.
Surprisingly enough, MS gives us a free solution! They provide VirtualPC images for a number IE/Windows combinations. You can attach the VHD images to VirtualBox (as of version 2.0 it supports VirtualPC disk images) or convert them to Parallels Desktop using their Transporter tool. The only trick (yeah, MS did have to screw it up!) is that images are distributed in self-extracting EXE files. So you will need either a windows machine or Wine to unpack 'em.
Лучшее, что я читал о БАК!
Дым рассеивается, у ворот рая стоят Равшан и Джумшут в белых халатах и в очках.
Открываются ворота.
Выходит Апостол Петр (Светлаков)
- Э, вы че тут делаете?
- А, щьто делаим? Э ми тут...
- Я вас спрашиваю, что у вас там бабахнуло?
- Бабащнуль, да сильна, бабащнуль белемге калайдер сламался,
нащяльника...
- Коллайдер? Да вы там ваще охренели что ли? Да вы поняли, что вы там
натворили? Вы нахрена его ваще строили?
- Хигис деляли...
- Какой еще хигис?
- Бозонма хигис делали... Адин сделали, фтароой сделали, и вместе их два
один сделали...
- Вы их че, столкнули что ли?
- Нет, нащяльника, защема сталкнули... Проста разагнали быстра... ощеня
быстра... они сами станълкнулися, нащяльника... а патооом, патооом
эжембе пещельбехъ бихтимиле шайтанама!
- Ну вы ваще придурки! Ну нахрена вам это было надо? Еще один Большой
Взрыв захотели?
- Зрыв бальшой, нащяльника, ощеня бальщой зрыв, шайтан - бабащнуль
калайдерма кирьдихълар..
- Ну, хрен с вами, заходите, экспериментаторы, блин.
- А там еще за нами потом заходить будут...
- Вы че, идиоты, кроме себя еще кого-то угробили?
- Защем угробили...? Не угробили, там калайдерма сламался...
- Ладно, сколько вас там
- Щесь милиардав... С половинама...
I’m on Twitter.
Every now and then I feel like writing a small not about something and sharing it with my friends. Something that doesn't deserve a post, or maybe not just yet. Yeah, I'm joining the Twitter users crowd and you're more than welcome to start following my feed or just leave a link to yours in the comments.
I used to say that Twitter is bad. Well, now I disagree with myself. It's good as it helps to keep the blog clean of thoughts' debris.
Wordpress.Com hosting – not my thing.
I feel this urge to express my frustration with wordpress.com service. I always knew that wordpress is a great blogging tool, very advanced with so many plugins available. So after I dropped my VPS hosting it was just natural to move to wordpress.com. The only thing I had to pay was 10$ for custom domain name per year, which looked reasonable. But then bad things started to build up.
When my CNAME on DNS panel was ready and I payed my 10 bucks I realized that there is no actual custom domain! There is just a silly redirect to .wordpress.com url! Sorry guys, that that is NOT what I wanted. I want people to bookmark MY domain so I have the freedom to move the blog anywhere I want in the future.
Then I started fixing some of the old imported posts. In the beginning I thought that embedded flash went a bit funny. After some googling though I figured out that I cannot put custom flash inside my posts! I can put youtube videos, music and some other silly 3rd party service. I went nuts at this point.
There were a few minor problems like limited choice of skins (come on, wordpress has way more than that!) and flood of spam comment not of all which was caught to antispam. And I couldn't upload custom files, only images.
So my advice is: if you feel that you need the power of WordPress get your self a hosting account. Otherwise stick to a free blogging service like blogspot which btw is getting better and better every time I login!
