Thoughts and Ramblings

General things I find of interest.

What Objective-C can learn from Java, Part 1 (Generics)

This is the first is a series of blog posts I’m going to write over the next several days on things that Objective-C can learn from Java. I’ve been programming in Java since 1997, and in Objective-C since 2001. The two languages have a lot of similarities, but there are a few design principles in which Java excels and Objective-C is left behind. This is understandable considering that Objective-C is older than Java, and Java borrowed heavily from Objective-C when it was designed.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Saturday, December 4, 2010

Trac.fcgi Memory Usage

I’ve been slowly transitioning to using nginx as the web front-end in an effort to reduce Apache’s memory usage. In keeping with this task, I’m moving more and more off of Apache. One piece I recently moved was trac, transitioning to using it directly by nginx by running it in fast-cgi mode where as previously it was running as cgi though Apache. While fast-cgi is faster, it has inherent issues, such as any memory leak can result in ever growing memory usage, which is exactly why Apache has a setting for each child to serve a limited number of requests before exiting.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Saturday, October 16, 2010

Google Link Redirection (cont.)

Earlier I wrote about google’s link redirection. I have finally finished my testing of a Safari extension which kills this behavior. I didn’t want to release this extension until the updating mechanism worked and that is what took me so long. Anyway, here is the the extension. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Saturday, October 9, 2010

Googleâ€™s Link Redirection

Google, for quite some time, has been redirected clicks on links in their search results to www.google.com/url?…. While I don’t approve of such practices, I didn’t mind it so much since this is presumably an effort to improve their search results. That changed recently, when I noticed that my history in Safari was filled with entries containing that URL as the title. Considering the fact that I often use the history to re-find a page with pertinent information, this is bordering on making my browser usage useless.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Text Compression Code Released

After it’s original post, I got a request for the code I used in my text compression technique. I’ve not gotten around to cleaning up the code and separating it from it’s test environment so it can be distributed separately. You can read more about it in its own page. Sometime soon, I’ll get around to releasing my code for fetching old Escape Pod episodes that I hinted at earlier.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Saturday, July 17, 2010