18 May 2012
Git and Subversion are the flavour of the month for source control time machines. I’ve used just about every source control system that’s been made over the years including RCS, PVCS, SourceSafe, ClearCase, Perforce and CVS. There’s a nice history of version control systems here. Here’s my cheat sheet (for Linux / OSX / Cygwin) users. Read the rest of this entry »
18 May 2012
Ubuntu 12.04 is here and I’ve been using it for almost a month now. It’s the Long Term Support version so it’s going to be around for many years to come. Also Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is doing a fantastic job of getting Ubuntu pre-installed on PC’s in favour of Windows. However, there are some significant changes to the UI that Ubuntu has introduced in the past year or so that take some getting used to. Here are some tips to get the most out of this latest version with the minimum sweat. Read the rest of this entry »
8 May 2012
I just unboxed and set up an iPhone 3GS today. What a nightmare. I continue to be flabbergasted why people continue to sing the praises of Apple products. The ‘it just works’ hype is just that, hype. Read the rest of this entry »
4 May 2012
It’s Java so you don’t need to worry – the garbage collector ‘just does it’, right?
NOT!
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Bitmap Size Exceeds VM Budget is a common error and don’t we know it! The garbage collector isn’t totally magic and no guarantee that your app cannot / will not leak memory. There are various deliberate approaches / considerations that should be taken to avoid memory problems: Read the rest of this entry »
11 Apr 2012
If you want to manage a custom schema with a web interface with multiple users, multiple languages for UI and content, you could roll your own using something like CakePHP to provide a framework. Doing it that way, you’ll be re-inventing many wheels for user management, authentication, etc. I evaluated half a dozen ‘higher-level’ CMS and settled on Drupal since it has all of this infrastructure plus many mature add-ons (‘modules’) that mean that you can focus on implementing the specifics of your web application rather than writing lots of plumbing. Furthermore, it’s PHP so it’s easy to deploy on inexpensive hosted services on the internet (not something that you can say for Java-based CMS, for example). Read the rest of this entry »