Apple “Genius”

Recently I sold my old, damaged MacBook Pro on eBay, and in doing so I claimed that there was a chance that it could be repaired (by Apple) for free. But how, you may be wondering, could I make such a bold claim? Was it all a strategy to over-sell my broken laptop? Not in the least. Back when I first found out about this Apple’s KB article, the contents of which appeared as though they would entitle me to a...

Selling my old MacBook Pro

A few days ago I placed my old MacBook Pro up for auction on Ebay, with a starting price of $200 and no reserve. While the auction has generated interest, so far there has been only one bidder. The auction ends in a little over two days. If you are interested, please read the description carefully and then bid with confidence. Despite being damaged, a laptop like this is still worth a few hundreds dollars due the...

Unlocking intermediate resolutions on Sony Vaio FWs

In my recent Sony Vaio FW Series review I mentioned that one of the major drawbacks of an this excellent laptop was the inability to select a resolution other than full-hd (1920×1080), 1024×768 or 800×600 on Windows. For all intents and purposes, by default you are stuck with the native 1920×1080 resolution. This is crystal clear, and ideal for watching movies, particularly hi-def ones through...

Sony Vaio FW Series: A Developer’s Review

For the past three months or so I haven’t had a computer of my own. This is not as bad as it sounds, because I’ve had work hardware, but such computers are intended to be used for work purposes only. Now that DB2 on Mac has been released, I’m waiting on the new 17″ MacBook Pro, which will be added to the setup as well, but again, that’s a work machine and it won’t arrive for at...

Random thoughts on software piracy and open source business models

In a recent blog entry, Jeff Atwood discussed the subject of software piracy, bringing up the example of a succesfull indie game called World of Goo, whose estimated piracy rate is about 82% (initially reported as 90%). Perhaps in an effort to appeal to the ethical side of his readers, Jeff underlines how “this is not a game that deserves to be pirated”, how it’s developed by a team of two indie...

My visit to the Apple Store

Two days ago my MacBook Pro’s screen turned black. Following what I assume was an unsuccessful firmware upgrade, my laptop stopped displaying anything on its LCD. It would boot, greet me with a chime and I could even login and adjust the volume, all without seeing a thing. After researching the issue online, I ended up trying many possible solutions all to no avail. Some people managed to resolve what seemed...

TextMate is the king of Rails editors

Tim Bray has published the results of his nice survey about Ruby and Rails editors. In Bray’s piece we see that TextMate is the tool of choice for the Rails focused group, while Vi leads the way in terms of the Ruby one (albeit TextMate is very close):       One thing is clear, TextMate IS the editor of choice when it comes to the Ruby and Rails communities, and since it runs only on Mac, it...

Desktop Applications are not dead!

In his article, ”Desktop Applications are Dead”, Eugueny Kontsevoy – a Windows developer – argues sarcastically about the demise of Desktop applications. His article has real merit though and focuses almost exclusively on the problems which are introduced by Vista’s aggressive security policies. The annoying aspect of Windows Vista’s “cancel or allow” is undeniable, especially if...

Redirecting Atom feeds from Typo and WordPress to FeedBurner

With the recent switch from Typo to WordPress I had to address the issue of handling my existing and new feeds. On top of that I decided that it was the right moment to switch to FeedBurner, so I had to handle the redirect for both Typo and WordPress at the same time. If you prefer Atom 1.0 over RSS 2.0 (you should), this brief post will tell you how to migrate to FeedBurner and Atom. Where is your Atom feed? When...

The Apple approach (aka first impressions of the MacBook Pro)

All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. – Paul Graham A week has gone by since I received my 15” MacBook Pro from Apple. In this post I’ll share my first impressions about the whole experience especially for those who are considering the switch. Ordering the Mac I placed my order online through the Canadian Apple store, selecting the available 2 day shipping option. The ordering process...

Switching to Mac

Despite the somewhat disappointing announcements (from a hardware standpoint), I appreciated Steve Jobs’ focus on the new features of the Mac OS X Leopard during yesterday’s keynotes at WWDC. I’ve been using Windows Vista for a few months now (albeit Ubuntu is my main OS) and the impression that I’ve gotten really hasn’t been wildly positive. Microsoft failed to be innovative, instead they mostly just...

Looking for a good laptop for Ruby development

A few days ago I received a new laptop from work, it’s a nice IBM Thinkpad X60 tablet, an ultra-portable 12” that offers up an honest performance. It is a fine machine, and when hooked up to a large widescreen monitor it can be used for development in most environments. If I’m on the go, speaking at conferences for example, its weight and size make it ideal for carrying around. I’ve already...

Typo errors on postponed articles

This is a tip that I’m writing in the hopes of helping Typo users who will google for the following error messages uninitialized constant ActionController::TestRequest or undefined method `publish!’ for nil:NilClass. While publishing an article on db2onrails.com, I’ve selected a future publishing date for the post (just to round it off to the half an hour mark). I’ve performed this operation...

Typo and Lucid theme error

The Typo theme ‘Lucid’ seems to generate an error when used with the latest version (trunk) of Typo. In order to solve this, simply replace the following code in your /typo/themes/lucid/layouts/default.rhtml file: <%= render_component(:controller => 'sidebars/sidebar', :action => 'display_plugins') %> with <% benchmark "BENCHMARK: layout/sidebars" do %> <%=...