Mike Cohen

links for 2010-03-19

by
  • CodeIgniter User Guide
    CodeIgniter is an Application Development Framework – a toolkit – for people who build web sites using PHP. Its goal is to enable you to develop projects much faster than you could if you were writing code from scratch, by providing a rich set of libraries for commonly needed tasks, as well as a simple interface and logical structure to access these libraries. CodeIgniter lets you creatively focus on your project by minimizing the amount of code needed for a given task.
    (tags: codeigniter php opensource programming reference webdesign tools)

PicSlide 1.2 Submitted

by

I just submitted PicSlide 1.2. Hopefully this will be approved as quickly as the ICHC update.

New in this version:

  • Choose Picture button moved to main screen
  • New picture chooser screen.
  • Increased difficulty of all levels except easy
  • Optimized build for 3.0 only

When this version is approved, the price will return to $1.99.

ICHC 2.0.1 is now available

by

I Can Has Cheezburger 2.0.1 is now available for sale, 48 hours after I submitted it. I strongly recommend updating to this version, since it now uses the Cheezburger featured content API instead of my scraped feed (which often went down, resulting in no pictures displayed). Note that this version is NOT compatible with OS 2.x, and this time I set the proper build options to insure that it can’t be installed on 2.x devices.

With ICHC 2.0 I mistakenly kept the deployment target as 2.0, which allowed people with unsupported systems to install it and have it crash immediately.

The OS 3.0 requirement is due to my use of Three20, which is not compatible with 2.x. Since OS 3.0 is now a free upgrade for iPod Touch users, there’s no reason to continue to support OS 2.x. I was also able to take advantage of this by producing an optimized (arm6 & arm7) build for the Pro version. Unfortunately I couldn’t build the free version optimized, since the Collider Media library isn’t arm7 compatible.

PicSlide update coming soon

by

I have a minor update to PicSlide that I’ll probably submit later this week. I’ve made a few refinements to the user interface, most notably moving the picture chooser to the main menu instead of the settings screen. I’ve also increased the difficulty levels by increasing the number of times it shuffles the pieces in all levels except easy. When version 1.2 is approved, the price will return to $1.99.

After I get my iPad, I will release another update that will take advantage of the larger screen.

Backup Strategies

by

John Gruber writes about his recent hard disk crash:

Hard drives are fragile. Read as much as you can bear to about how they work, how incredibly precisely they must operate in order to cram so many bits onto such small disks. It’s a miracle to me that they work at all. Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times. It’s good to be spooked about how long your hard drives will last.

Luckily he had good backups, which saved his butt.

Merlin Mann gives more hints on smart backup strategies:

Perform automated, redundant, and rotated backups as often as you can afford to lose every single bit of information that’s been changed or added since your last backup. Because it’s going to go away.

This is exactly why I prefer CrashPlan instead of Time Machine. CrashPlan will automatically backup to multiple destinations, which can include both a local drive and CrashPlan Central, which provides off-site backups for extra security. Unlike Time Machine, which doesn’t work well on network drives other than a Time Capsule, CrashPlan is perfectly happy backing up over the network, which is a big plus for laptops.

CrashPlan is only one part of my backup strategy. Although I use it to back up my MacBook continuously, I use Time Machine on my iMac with a FireWire drive since it stays on my desk. I also use DropBox to sync most of my critical folders between my iMac and MacBook. I also do regular full drive backups with SuperDuper.

ICHC 2.0.1 Submitted

by

I just submitted I Can Has Cheezburger 2.0.1 with the following changes:

  • Uses featured content API instead of scraped feed
  • “There, I fixed it” replaces “Once Upon a Win”, which isn’t available with the API
  • Thumbnails are now displayed for movies
  • Deployment target properly set to 3.0 so it won’t load on 2.x devices

By using the API it will no longer depend on this server, which often goes down under heavy use resulting in no photos loading. Like 2.0, this version is NOT compatible with any OS version older than 3.0. In 2.0 I didn’t set the deployment target to 3.0, so people with older systems were still able to install it, resulting in an immediate crash (which I got about 5 emails a day about).

The application will remain unavailable until the new version is approved, because I’m sick of dealing with all of the bitching because my server goes down or because they’re using OS 2.x.