Tom Insam › Comments

[[ The Grant-Pattishall Award is given yearly to the individual who breaks flickr.com in the most spectacular way. ]] - Tom Insam

See more in my Dopplr profile. - Tom Insam

I'll be there just for the day. See more in my Dopplr profile. - Tom Insam

Something to look at next time I want to hack on a project - this is a Java framework that looks very heavily inspired by Rails et al, looks nice for dev. - Tom Insam

See more in my Dopplr profile. - Tom Insam

I'll be there from October 8th until October 9th. See more in my Dopplr profile. - Tom Insam

Craig Hunter tries to complain about Palm's approach to music sync. [[ You see, Palm doesn't need the iTunes app to sync the Pre. They don't need to draw Apple's ire, or play yo-yo with their customers over this important capability. They can sync the Pre to a customer's iTunes music library with a public, open, and documented approach that has been used by third-party developers and device makers for years. This capability was created by none other than Apple itself ]]My problem with this is that it's not true. I can find no documentation of the iTunes music library format. It's mentioned in a KB article, yes, but only alongside other iLife applications. It's a way for _Apple_ to decouple their iLife apps and have, say, iPhoto play music while doing slideshows. - Tom Insam

[[ Scaling is basically an engineering problem, which can be solved with the right architecture and algorithms. Reliability is more like security: it's a weakest-link problem and requires constant vigilance in all areas, including engineering, testing, operations, and deployment ]] I'm going to bookmark this and read it every week. - Tom Insam

Oooh: [[ the new folder structure comes with this other new folder, Automatically Add to iTunes. It’s a folder with a pre-configured folder action, such that any media file you drop in there will be instantly added to iTunes ]] Actually using this feature would entail quite a radical change to the way I manage music in my house. But maybe itunes 9 and its sharing features justify this change.. - Tom Insam

Paul speaks Truth. [[ ..while adding more "extras" would reduce the number of API calls needed for a specific application, it doesn't reduce the load on flickr's back end systems. We've found it actually increases the load, as developers are more likely to request extra data they don't need, and one heavy API request ties up more of our system resources than multiple lighter API requests. ]] Also, developer time. But that's more obvious. What I like is the point that, yes, it's annoying making n+1 calls, but putting that into one call is still going to end up as n+1 *database* calls at some point. Joins are Bad. Keep them explicit. - Tom Insam

[[ Every single piece of infrastructure that people are using on the Web today was developed after the authenticate headers were designed. If people have designed a scripting host in such a fashion that the information does not make it through, that is clearly either a deliberate decision on their part or the system is so clueless that you probably don't want to use it for any security related application in any case. ]] - Tom Insam

[[ I want to drive home the point that Earth is a very large place, and no matter where you are located, most of the world's population isn't anywhere near you - and no amount of technology will fix problems caused by the laws of physics ]] - Tom Insam

[[ are adults going to buy tickets to Transformers 17 times? In other words, are adults a market that has enough spare time and cash to make it worth anyone’s while to pursue? And do they buy enough low-cost high-price food? ]] [[ Realistically, unless we are willing to shell out the same amount of money for a movie as we are for a ballet or play, we’re probably not a market that’s worth a whole heck of a lot. As long as 3-D is putting young bums on the seats, then it’s doing its job. ]] - Tom Insam

MacOS git binary installers. - Tom Insam

[[ I'm a Mac developer, so ultimately I compare iPhone development to Mac development. Comparisons to other phones are interesting from an abstract point of view but ultimately make no difference to me. The question is not, "Which phone shall I develop for?" It's, "Shall I develop for a phone at all?" Answer: no ]] I understand and agree with the argument, but me, I want to develop for mobile. I _like_ the mobile platform. I just still can't decide if I want to throw in with Android or stay in the nice fuzzy world of the iPhone. - Tom Insam

Huh, where did this come from? Google Labs Android app for finding, downloading and listening to podcasts. Given that 90% of all my music listening is now either through Spotify or podcasts, this is a Good Thing. - Tom Insam

10.6-only software that lets you sign things using the trackpad. Yay technology. - Tom Insam

Useful list of things you need to do to get rails happy on Snow Leopard, particularly getting mysql to work and updating macports. Includes a very nice script for finding local gems with native parts and telling you to reinstall them. - Tom Insam

See more in my Dopplr profile. - Tom Insam

[[ There are plenty of technological markets in which there has never been a dominant open player or option, such as game consoles, non-“smart” mobile phones, and nearly every type of enterprise software, but the markets still thrive and very few people complain about the lack of openness ]] - Tom Insam

[[ Also they want to be able to give the same visual impression both in print and the web ]] web font limitations are now imporant enough to dictate branding choices? Luckily, the font foundries are pushing ahead quickly with an easy to implement solution to... oh, wait. - Tom Insam

Very simple embeddable fireeagle blogbadge. I'll write the backend code for this myself at some point, but till I get round to that, this will do nicely. - Tom Insam

[[ Sanitize is a whitelist-based HTML sanitizer. Given a list of acceptable elements and attributes, Sanitize will remove all unacceptable HTML from a string ]] - Tom Insam

See more in my Dopplr profile. - Tom Insam

noooo, I _use_ the term extraction service. Bugger. - Tom Insam

I'll be there from August 7th until August 14th. See more in my Dopplr profile. - Tom Insam

[[ These languages are interchangeable, especially for building web application. Neither are more awesome. They get the job done and they make programmers happy ]] Amen. via Marco. - Tom Insam

Death! Disaster! Organic chemistry! - Tom Insam

An offline google reader client for Android / Cupcake. Looks pretty nice. Possibly not as slick as Byline (my iPhone client) but again, that might just be the speed of my device. I'll try it for a few days. - Tom Insam

stevenf, unlike me, _is_ prepared to take the pain of using something that isn't the iPhone, simply because of the situation with the store. [[ after an entire year of continuous bad decisions that are hostile to developers and consumers alike, we’ve moved on from “working out the kinks” to good old-fashioned getting fucked ]] He's moving to the Palm Pre. That's not even an option in the UK yet, and because I won't be able to get an unlocked one even once they _are_ available here. Here's a thought - none of the angry screeds I'm reading are because someone wants background apps, or a hardware keyboard, or any of the stuff that people seem to think we're missing. They're angry at the _store_. - Tom Insam