42% faster than one quarter before

interdubs

Today Interdubs crossed the 60,000 file mark. 83 days ago there where 40,000 files. Before that it took 118 days to go from 20,000 to 40,000. Interdubs grew 42% faster than in the quarter before. There are 25 official clients now that choose to be mentioned on the website. Interestingly, the support amount has actually gone down. Fixing every bug right away makes seems to let the total number go down. Most emails and calls are about new features and concepts. Since I often don’t get things right the first time, people have to make awesome suggestions how new features and concepts could be implemented better. I think that there is huge value in this kind of feedback. Users are used to things working efficientlly in interdubs. When something does not then they point me to it.

Being able to change the code in minutes and doing so frequently is one of the priceless concepts that are hard to imagine. But now I would never attempt to write software in any different way.

OS X server 10.5 is a waste of time

Apple OSX

So I thought I’d give OS X Server another try. With 10.2 it was dismals. But things might have changed. Years have gone by. Turns out some of the horror is gone. But overall it is still a waste of time. Total waste. Serving AFP volumes. Fair enough, that works. I got a used G5 and over gigE the performance is decent.

For everthing else: Just don’t touch it. Apple has made a nice and impressive bullet list of features. And every single one I have tried to use stinks. It is as bad as Microsoft software 5 years ago. Just get any linux server do these things. Trying to configure / tweak / guess the Apple server interface is (still) an utter waste of time. It might demo ok, but anything that you like to do in real life (anymous ftp with write permissions, having a second wiki that does NOT 404, etc etc) is simply impossible. Allot of clicking to just find the feature to be broken in the end. A waste of 500 Dollars. That’s what OS X server 10.5 still is. Stay away from it. You will be much happier.

first time for everything

internet technology

Probably a coincidence. Freak accident. Kind of. Today was the first time that Google happened to return meaningless crap and MSN actually showed me the page that addressed my issue. I was looking to get rid of “PHP Notice: Undefined index: ” which -and I should have known that anyway- is a simple isset() call. But why remember things when the internet can, right? Well until the net turns to mudd.

I wonder if I just had bad luck or if the latest Google version I get to see is actually having ranking issues for relevance.

gcc_select

Apple OSX

when compiling gives this error:

/usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
std::__default_alloc_template::deallocate(void*, unsigned long)
std::__default_alloc_template::allocate(unsigned long)

then use

gcc_select 3.3

to use the proper compiler.

(this is a blog entry that I will hopefully find when I google for this problem again in six months or so)

the Teutonic invasion of 08

deutschland free of any reason umlautfrei

This summer the east coast, mostly New York, Boston and Florida will witness an invasion of Germans that might make people wonder who actually won the second world war. Germans are obsessed with effiency. And they have 6 weeks vacation a year. And they like to safe money. Well, that’s efficiency again. Right now they pay 65 Euro cents for each dollar. While making as much or more than their US colleagues. So everything is really really cheap for them in the US. Which is only a short flight away. Let’s say you are planning to get a MacBook Pro. You get that 732 dollars cheaper in the US than it would cost you in Germany. That pays for your airfaire. And so it does continue.

I think that there will a certain amount of trouble around this new wave of Aldi-Ami invasion. You see, many Germans are not so keen on the american way. Well. At least many of them are not. This has many complex reasons, and a couple of simple ones. As simple as having an Idiot President. Mrs Merkel for instance was a physicist by profession. Now stupid people exist in all countries alike. And your average obnoxious american tourist is probably as obnoxious as your average german obnoxious tourist. The difference is that American are blissfully unaware just why everybody seems to hate them. Germans expect that to be the case. Some might even consider this wave of lifted eyebrows that they face a part of their perks when they travel abroad.

In any respect it will not be fun, and I should try to get a dialect coach to get an italian accent or something, should I have to go to the east coast this summer.

pesky keychain password prompt

Apple OSX

After I rebooted my computer the Keychain prompted me for a password. I had seen this on other people machines before. The peskiness of this issue is rather windowesk. I am so glad that I could fix it! I got out the backup of my machine and copied the contents of ~/Library/Keychains from there. Reboot. Done, works again. Needless to say that I made a quick copy of this Keychains directory.

The problem was that none of my passwords really work. Apple recommends in those cases to delete the keychain and create a new one. Which is rather ridicolous. I have 140 items in my keychain. Of which I propably use 80, of those I maybe remember 50 the password for. It’s not a nice outlook having to enter / guess passwords 80 times in the next months. Probably exactly when I need to get something done quickly. Not getting distracted by the machine when something needs to get done is important. It’s why I choose to run a Mac.

How nice to have a backup.

macbook air – and I don’t care

Apple marketing technology

In the Apple store I had a quick look and hands on with the MacBook Air. And I am quiet underwhelmed. Yes, it is light. Yes it has thin edges. Thin edges are probably a great thing when you would like to put your computer into an inter office envelope. Funny thing is, I never had reason to do that. Since six years I have been pretty on various laptop models for the greater part of my waking hours. I have use the thing in various places in in rather unorthodox ways I think. But, never ever did I say to myself: “Darn, the laptop does not fit into this interoffice envelope!”. If the 15″ was to big then I took the iBook aka Macbook. Works for me. If the 15″ is to small then I hook up another screen or get on a real computer. Yesterday I used the big iMac for instance and it just worked great.

I really don’t see the point to spend allot of money for a machine that has allot of drawbacks, and whos only upside seems to be that it does fit into an envelope.

Too bad, would love to justify a new computer.

BluRay would have been a better thing than this Air hocus-pocus.

“Still haven’t seen my bill, I’m actually eager to pay it.”

confessions of a pixel pusher economy interdubs marketing

That’s an actual quote of a client in an email received a couple of minutes ago. It is his first month with Interdubs, and he is not used to the fact that the bill will only arrive once the month is over. And then he can pay it. Or not. If he should feel like that. Which sounds ‘good hearted’ or ‘weak’. But it makes actually allot of (business) sense: Most of my clients have made more money with the site in their first week of using it, then it will cost them for whole month. A not so significant part of them actually takes just a few hours to make the 285 that the services costs them. Either by direct billing or by improved client relationships. I was aware of this when I designed the system and set the price. The price is solely based on the system working as well as it seems to be. It is arranged around my costs and the future potential of more clients. And maybe on the fact that I like to code fast.

I really hate the business model that tries to leach on to the success of its clients. Network Neutrality is one of those. Phone companies would sure love to charge more for important business conversations than for idle chit chat.

But back to Interdubs: having a super reasonable price that are people actually eager to pay makes everything much easier on everybody. So far people paid their bills. The majority of companies in record time. Thanks again and also from here. If I would try to squeeze more money out of the service, then I might need an accounting department that starts bugging people. I’d rather not.

On the other side with the latest feature additions the price / performance ratio is in danger to tip from “great” to “ridicolously great”. I have feedback from many of my clients saying that the service is too cheap. And I suspect that I could actually sign up more people if the price were higher. Most people think just because the competition is ten times more expensive it also would be better.

OS X API Apple secretism bullshit

Apple OSX technology

For me this blog entry is very interesting in a couple of ways. Yes, it does expose that Apple has created a two class world. Other developers are welcome, as long as they add applications and functionalities. But whenever Apple feels like it, they will keep parts of the system they develop for themselves. This is extremely stupid and short sighted. It certainly got Microsoft not anywhere.

one fucking fifty?

politics

you need 1.51 dollars today to buy one Euro.

I know, since I bought lots of Euros today.

I needed 89 cents to buy a Euro before the moron became President.