2009
Gentoo Optimizations Benchmarked | Linux Magazine
Although we are not comparing apples to apples, Gentoo did out-perform Ubuntu in almost every test, and sometimes by a fair margin. It does appear that optimizing for a specific CPU can yield a decent performance increase.
Of course, Gentoo offers benefits in other areas with their USE flags and being able to build a highly customized system. The question is whether the amount of time it takes is worth the benefit, and that’s a personal choice.
High Performance Web Sites :: @font-face and performance
by 1 otherA quick survey shows that seven of the Alexa U.S. top ten web sites have a SCRIPT tag above their stylesheets or STYLE blocks: AOL, Facebook, Google, Bing, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo!. These web sites don’t currently use @font-face, but if they did, they would experience the IE blocked rendering problem. This raises the concern that other web sites that are early adopters of @font-face have a SCRIPT tag above @font-face and their IE users run the risk of experiencing blocked rendering.
Tornado Web Server Documentation
Tornado comes with limited support for WSGI. However, since WSGI does not support non-blocking requests, you cannot use any of the asynchronous/non-blocking features of Tornado in your application if you choose to use WSGI instead of Tornado's HTTP server. Some of the features that are not available in WSGI applications: @tornado.web.asynchronous, the httpclient module, and the auth module.
in other words: WSGI sucks
Are you building an everyday app? (the LinkedIn problem) - Bokardo
In general, most people think they’re building an everyday app, but they’re not. When the actual use patterns are discovered, most apps will be used every few days or less. Designers have to ask themselves a very hard question: “How often are people really going to use our web application?”.
Bill de hÓra: Snowflake APIs
(via)RDF is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better format and data API designer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use RDF itself a lot. (You can get some beginning experience with RDF fairly easily by writing and modifying simple files like FOAF and DOAP for social networks and software projects, or RDFa extensions for XHTML.)
MovingToDistutils - django-hotclub - the how and why of Pinax's move to distutils - Google Code
Until recently, Pinax had two choices for a given external dependency:
- use svn:externals and point to the external dependency's svn repository
- include the external dependency code in the Pinax codebase
However, there are problems with this approach:
- it largely relies on external dependencies being in svn and this is increasingly not the case (although it was when Pinax started)
- it makes it difficult for Pinax itself to move away from svn
- there is no management of dependencies between external dependencies, nor between particular projects in Pinax and their individual dependencies
To solve these problems and more, Pinax is switching to a distutils-based approach. This means:
- externals dependencies are encouraged to be released as distutil-compliant packages with a valid setup.py and put on PyPI
- development versions of dependencies can be pulled in in a variety of different ways including from git, hg or bzr repositories
svn:externals are evil
James Shore: The Decline and Fall of Agile
Or maybe we need to stop selling Agile. Maybe we need to say, "Agile is hard, and you can't master it by sitting through a two-day course." Maybe we need to be firm and say, "Sorry, if you don't use agile engineering practices, if you don't have high-bandwidth communication, and if you don't include a strong customer voice, you're not going to succeed. Try something else instead." Scrum is popular because it's easy--and that's part of the problem.
Is that linked to the cargo cult thingy?
5 Design Decision Styles. What's Yours?
(via)In our research, we found that the most effective teams were skilled in all five styles, choosing the style that best fit the needs and goals of a project. For example, they might concurrently be involved in deep research on a User-Focused project, while relying on their experience for a Genius designed project, and spend a little time whipping out some one-shot functionality whose results would be Unintended Design.
Since the teams are working with different styles all the time, does it matter? Our research says it does. The teams that produced the best experiences knew these styles well and how to quickly switch between them. They knew when they needed to go whole hog and pull out all the stops for a User-Focused style project, while also knowing when it was important to bang out a quick design, knowing the results would essentially be unintended. Those teams had a rich toolbox of techniques and a solid understanding on how and when to use them.
There is no silver bullet.
2008
How people really use the iPhone - SlideShare
We recently published "How people really use the iPhone", an interesting readout of design issues and recommendations for people designing for the iPhone and beyond. Our presentation on this topic at the iPhone Developer's Summit was called the "best presentation of the conference" by several attendees.
Some of the problem exposed applies to other system imho.
Code Intensity: SVN Externals are Evil; Use Piston or Braid
by 1 otherthe evil is SVN itself not handling changing of externals (i.e. to/from an external) in basic operations like updates and merges, which may cause a lot of manual work on your end, and break automated builds or similar.
wondering about massively usage of it.
typeface.js -- Rendering text with Javascript, <canvas>, and VML
by 12 othersCloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder | Technology | guardian.co.uk
2 comments"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," he said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software."
Should I stop using Blogmarks?
Internationalization Best Practices: Handling Right-to-left Scripts in XHTML and HTML Content
This document provides advice for the use of XHTML or HTML markup and CSS to create pages for languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew. It attempts to counter many of the misunderstandings or over-complexities that currently abound. It also offers advice to those preparing content that will be localized into scripts that behave like Arabic and Hebrew.
Ultimate multi-column liquid layouts (em and pixel widths)
by 4 othersThis series of layouts use pixel and em widths and relative positioning, and they work with all the common web browsers including Safari on the iPhone and iPod touch. They're also 'stackable' so you can use multiple column types on the one page.
liquid layout for the win!
Stop using Ajax! - Opera Developer Community
by 1 otherIn summary, these are my points:
- I'm not saying Ajax is bad, I'm saying it's immature
- I'm not saying never use Ajax, I'm saying don't use it for the sake of it, and try to avoid it for now, instead sticking to accessible alternatives
a PHB mandatory article
2007
GenshiTutorial - Genshi - Trac
This tutorial is intended to give an introduction on how to use Genshi in your web application, and present common patterns and best practices.
very interesting template language.
captsolo weblog - FOAF for Social Network Portability
So - what’s the use of FOAF for Social Network Portability?
Is this the silver bullet?
MapReduce cookbook for machine learning « Free Search
Here’s a paper from Stanford showing how to use MapReduce to scalably implement ten different machine learning algorithms!
another thing to read