In the mean time, I leave you with this xkcd cartoon:

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Starting:
do shell script "/sw/sbin/apachectl start" password "MY_PASSWORD" with administrator privileges do shell script "/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe > /dev/null 2>&1 &" password "MY_PASSWORD" with administrator privileges

Stopping:
do shell script "/sw/sbin/apachectl stop" password "MY_PASSWORD" with administrator privileges do shell script "/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root -pROOT_MYSQL_PASSWORD shutdown" password "MY_PASSWORD" with administrator privileges

You will obviously need to change MY_PASSWORD to your admin password. You need to change ROOT_MYSQL_PASSWORD to your root MySQL password, or another user name/password combo with shutdown privileges. Note: there should not be a space between -p and ROOT_MYSQL_PASSWORD.

Also, the path to apache/mysql might need changing. You can find out where they are by running which apachectl and which mysqld_safe in the terminal.

Just paste the code into Script Editor, and save how/wherever you like. I save mine as run-only executables which show up nicely in Quicksilver.

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Take a look.

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I've moved to DreamHost, because I wanted a cheap host who had SSH access and other goodies to play with (RoR and Subversion particularly). With a $99 discount, it's cheap enough that I can just discard it after a year if it's not good enough.

My first observation is that it's noticeably slower than the old host. Especially MySQL as the database is on a different machine. It might be worth looking into installing a local copy if possible.

Finally, DreamHost have disabled PHPs allow_url_fopen ini setting, which breaks my favatars code. I've fixed my own copy to and will upload a new version as soon as I've more fully tested it.

Edit:
There also seems to be a problem with escaping characters to go into the database. Something else to fix…

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Cocoa's bindings are totally amazing. While making a custom control I suddenly thought I wanted to make it able to use the bindings system to get/set the control value. Below is the code to do this:

+ (void)initialize {
	[self exposeBinding:@"dateValue"];
}

Great isn't it?

As long as your accessors are already key-value-coding compliant (ie. are of the form value/setValue; firstName/setFirstName etc.), you just call exposeBinding for each binding you want to create and that's it!

Ah, less code, less bugs. Love it.

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My last three phones have been:

1. Sony Ericsson k700
2. Motorola V3 (RAZR)
3. Samsung D900 (current - also broken)

The joystick thing on the k700 gummed up with crud. I shattered my RAZR (totally my fault). The D900, I picked it up off my desk the other day and the screen was blank and refused to come on. It's going off to be replaced/repaired sometime this week. Of these three phones, they either had a nice design (RAZR, D900) or a nice OS (k700). This made them pretty mediocre phones all-round, although the D900 is the best so far.

The iPhone appeals to me because it's got a very nice design with no moving parts to gum up, though the screen will need protecting. It's also got a very good OS, with a lot of thought gone in to what a phone is mainly used for. ie. Making calls and sending text messages. On some phones now these feature seems almost an afterthought.

Being a music player, it looks like I could sell my iPod. You couldn't do that with the Motorola ROKR even though it was supposed to be a music phone. Battery life would be a big concern though. How much would 2 hours music listening shorten the phone talk time? Will reserve judgement on that until I can actually get my paws on a working model.

The internet/email stuff is not something I use now as data transfer is too expensive. This having built-in wi-fi could well convert me on to using it. It'd be good for taking on trips instead of my laptop.

Something that would be a killer feature for me would be having skype on there and using that when I'm connected to a suitable network rather than my cellular network provider. No wi-fi? Use Vodafone at whatever price they charge at the moment. Got wi-fi? Use skype to call at a fraction of the Vodafone price.

Size & price are something I'll reserve judgement on until I can handle a working model. Trying to judge sizes without actually holding it is just too tricky. Price? We'll have to wait and see what they set it at in the UK. Aaaaand that brings us to the release date. Fourth quarter 2007. Too damn long.

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After outputting the favicon, the script would attempt to render a view (which doesn't exist here), triggering a "missing view" error. On a production Cake site, this causes a 404 error header to be sent along with the data. Consequently, the icon renders fine, but your error log starts filling up with 404 errors for files which are being displayed OK.

The fix is really simple, in the favatar() action, replace the return; statements with exit();. No more view rendering, no more 404s, no problem!

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Anyway, being as the favatars system on this blog is in its own controller and needs to be as fast as possible, I was looking for ways to speed it up. After much profiling of the page in Zend Studio and implementing caching I realised there was something else that could be done.

In my AppController, I declare the use of the Acl component, the Aro and Aco models and the HTML helper, as pretty much all controllers use these. Except for the favatars controller…

While I don't have numerical data to back this up, setting the $uses, $components and $helpers vars to null in the favatars controller (and thus not instantiating four unneeded classes) seems to speed up the icon serving a fair bit.

So yeah, the point of this is that you should always check you're not including and instantiating classes you don't need and that they might be in places you don't remember to check.

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By using this controller within <img> tags, favicons can be used as images anywhere within your site, without knowing their specific address. It is currently in use on this blog and favicons will appear next to post comments.

Examples:
CakePHP
Adium
Snook.ca
Menial
Default image

Instructions for use are included in the download and I will be posting improvements as they are made. Comments and suggestions are very welcome.

Get the code!

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