PHPDevHead

Slow SSH to Dreamhost on OS X October 23, 2008

For some strange reason I had been getting delays when connecting to Dreamhost via SSH.  Basically after typing in my password I’d be looking at 30-45 seconds waiting, then after typing a first command..,.  say ls -al, I’d have to wait 30-500 seconds for anything to appear.  After running a few commands, it would start to speed up and function normally.

Very annoying when I wanted to quickly log in and change 1-2 things on a file.  After some investigations, I think I have found the solution (I believe it is related to stored ssh private keys).

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.terminal.plist

To remove your terminal preferences (in case you have some funky preference causing issues, you may or may not need to do this).  Then:

rm ~/.ssh

Using VIM to edit PHP October 10, 2008

I’ve bee through a number of different editors for coding PHP, including PHPStudio, Dreamweaver, Eclipse, Zend Studio for Eclipse.  The quality of those editors ranged from great (eclipse) to terrible (Zend studio for eclipse, crashing buggy nightmare). I had some kind of negative issue on each of those platforms, generally things not working properly or certain functionality missing.

So I’ve made the leap to using Vim fulltime as a PHP editor.  The main advantage with VIM is that it can be found on pretty much every UNIX/OS X server on the internet.  I can log in and with some VIM knowledge continue editing a file quickly and easily.  No need to depend upon platform specific and expensive editing software.

To get started in vim on OS X the quickest way is to open a terminal window and type vimtutor and you’ll be presented with a pretty simple tutorial.  I just burned through that to make sure I had the basics down, then moved onto the help section and looked into creating new windows in vim (very cool) and search commands and patterns (very powerful).  In about 4-5 hrs you can go from VIM noob to vim intermediate.   Even if you don’t want to make it your fulltime editor and prefer something like dreamweaver, it’s a handy skill to have for editing files efficiently on UNIX boxes.

Google seeking more innovation September 24, 2008

Google is fostering innovation again, not by simply ecouraging their workers to spend a day per week thinking of new projects in a wide variety of niches, but also encouraging the public to innovate.  Project 10 to the 100th is a competition aimed at taking some great ideas from people around the world and realising those ideas.

The categories Google is accepting ideas in:

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures? Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem? Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
• Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

Check out out

Google buying Valve!! September 17, 2008

Rumours abound that Google might be buying game maker and distributor Valve in the next few days.  Various media sources have indicated that it is a pretty substantial rumour and should go ahead shortly.

Why would an Internet giant like Google buy a gaming company you ask?  Well it has something to do with the fact that Valve also operates ‘Steam’, one of the best online game distribution networks around (..well probably the best).  I use steam everyday to play online games including Team Fortress, Call of Duty 4 and ET: Quake Wars.

With Google’s power behind the great idea/implementation that is Steam we could see buying/playing games online becoming even more popular and widespread over the coming years.

Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates Ad Part 2 September 14, 2008

Ok this advertising campaign is getting weirder still.  Again I got a few chuckles over the absurdity of the situation Gates/Seinfeld are in, however I’m not sure it will do anything for Microsoft’s products or image.  MS need to release a new feature rich and fast operating system with medium hardware requirements (not the buggy intrusive mess that is Vista).  OS X and linux distros are continually ripping away market share and this ad campaign doesn’t assure me MS will hit back with good products.

Doubt trailer looks awesome!

Doubt is a film starring Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  The trailer looks incredible, great to see these 2 high quality actors together!

Widget Crazy! September 11, 2008

I’ve added more widgets to the blog…

Feedjit Map widget, which shows the general area where visitors are from, and a blog catalog recent visitors widget (similar to the yahoo mybloglog one I added a while back).  Hopefully I won’t add too many more or the page will become a behemoth!

US Elections

Looks like McCain has been up to a few dirty tricks in his advertisments.  Maybe he has Karl Rove on board his advertising campaign?

Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft Ad released! September 4, 2008

I got a couple of chuckles out of it, but stamping a celebrity on your product doesn’t make your product (Vista) suddenly catch up to OS X or the good Linux distros.   Anyway here it is…

Web Accessibility Toolbar

This is a fantastic Web Accessibility toolbar for Internet Explorer, which I stumbled upon recently.  It combines a lot of functions which people normally use the web developer toolbar (Firefox) for, as well as some specialised accessibility features.

Some of what it does:

• Validation shortcuts (W3C HTML Validator, W3C CSS Validator, W3C HTML Tidy, W3C Link Checker, WDG Html Validator etc)
• Screen Resize features (change resolution)
• Basic CSS functions to let you check applied styles quickly
• Image alt tag checker and image functions
• Page structure tools (DOM analyser etc)
• Tools.  Here it gets interesting, AccMonitor accessibility, The Wave accessibility tool, Webxact / Bobby and more.  Also, disability simulators including Diabetic Retinopathy, Glaucoma and Macular Degeneration.

That gives you a pretty good indication of exactly how accessible your site is.  You can download the toolbar via http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=614