16. Jun 2009 
0 comments
For a side project, I’ve been looking for a batch queueing system – i.e. a system that I simply submit a command script to, and the script gets executed on the next available server. The output is logged – while running – into a central database. Bonus points if there’s fine-grained control over what servers [...]
14. Jun 2009 
3 comments
Over time, I’ve accumulated quite a few projects on my hard drive. And while I like having them there, I always feel it’s a very fragile place to keep them. Yes, I do back up – less often than I should. But even then, it’s just an earthquake away from being gone.
So ideally, I’d like [...]
13. May 2009 0 comments
Since I really like my databases to be backed up, I wanted to make sure there’s at least a very rudimentary dump of my databases every night. (Note: While I host on Dreamhost, this should apply to other hosting services too)
Requirement #2 – I don’t want to manage my backups. After a couple of [...]
11. May 2009 0 comments
In my ongoing quest to build my web-based Django web site, the next step is creating a blog. The problem – there is no definitive blogging application for Django. That’s I guess true for any decent web framework – blogging is an application that’s simple enough that nobody bothers to go past what their own [...]
05. May 2009 0 comments
The first step in setting up my new online presence with Django is of course to just present a static home page. The goal is to be up and running as soon as possible, after all. Unfortunately, it’s a bit harder than just slapping your html and css files onto the web server when you’re [...]
04. May 2009 0 comments
I’ve been going through quite a bit of changes in my life lately – and as a part of that, my home blog (not this one – the personal things) will be moving to http://www.rachelblum.com.
And since I felt like I need more experience with web frameworks in general, I’m not sticking with my trusty wordpress. [...]
19. Jan 2009 0 comments
I’ve finally decided to give that “Lisp” thing another try. So, first order of business, find a good set of tools. First stop: AquaMacs
08. Jul 2008 1 comment
These days, I get quite a few questions from my fellow co-workers about resources to start with Cocoa development. So here’s a quick list of books that I absolutely recommend:
Objective C in general: Programming ObjectiveC
Intro to Cocoa: Learning Cocoa with ObjectiveC
Getting your feet wet on the iPhone: iPhone Open Application Development
And of course, when it [...]
24. Jun 2008 1 comment
I’ve been recently playing a little bit with GLSL/Core Image shaders. One of the earliest limitations I ran into was the fact that you cannot have conditional results. In other word, if you do an if/else test, the output of your shader cannot depend on it. (Not entirely sure why you’d want to use if/else [...]
01. Jun 2008 0 comments
RubyCocoa is one of the most fascinating tools on OSX. It makes it more than easy to rapidly prototype and try ideas with Cocoa. But unfortunately, out of the box, a RubyCocoa project seems to require an Objective-C shell to start it up. That means firing up XCode for every single prototype you’re playing with.
It [...]