Debugging Dashboard Widgets

The best source for debugging information comes by Apple itself! Apple released a technical note full of Widget debugging information and techniques. It is Technical Note TN2139. You can find it here.

The best technique for debugging Widgets is to use the alert() function. alert() statements are written to the Console. Please remember to remove your alert() function calls when you finish debugging or otherwise your Console logs may become too crowded. The TN2139 Technical Note explains in more detail the printing of the debug information in both the Dashboard environment and Safari.

One last advice when your newly developed Widget is not working properly: check that you have all the compulsory files included in the Widget bundle. I found that this is the most usual case when I was having difficulties with my Widgets. . . The next more frequent reason was misspelled filenames.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Nikon F-Mount Stop Motion Lens Parody (I'm a Mac)

Color Gamut Comparison: Eizo CG211 vs Apple Cinema 23 LCD

RAID 5 failure at dpreview.com

Friday 18th January, 12:45 PM GMT

"This morning at about 6 AM GMT we had a catastrophic failure in the RAID array of our forums database server. Our RAID-5 array would have been able to withstand losing one disk but apparently two died at the same time. Either way the entire array was unusable. Our hosting provider has now replaced all disks and rebuilt the server and we have begun the process of reinstalling and restoring. Further updates as we have them."
from http://www.dpreview.com/misc/080118forums.asp



So even a RAID-5 array can fail.

Your Camera doesn't matter

I just read another great article from Ken Rockwell and I would like to share it with you. It is here and is called "Your Camera doesn't matter".

He talks about creativity and the fact that "A camera catches your imagination".

The same is true for computer programming: it does not matter which keyboard or computer or computer language you are using; what matters is how you use it.

Please read the rest of the article to learn more.

RAW CPU Power

I was reading Apple Pro profiles and I made the following thoughts:

I currently have more CPU power than Walter Murch when editing the Cold Mountain movie. He had dual-processor Power Mac G4s and I have a dual-processor Power Mac G5!

Sooner or later I will have more CPU power than Bill Frakes currently has.

And I probably have more CPU power than Apple when building Mac OS 10.3 (a.k.a. Panther)...

What does this mean? It means that we should stop thinking about having more CPU power and learn how to use the machines we have in a more creative way. We should try to write more efficient code, create more efficient workflows and think more before doing something.

New MacPros!

Processing

• 8-core: Two 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz, or 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors
  
• Quad-core: One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processor
  
• Enhanced Intel Core microarchitecture
  
• • 12MB of L2 cache per processor (each pair of cores shares 6MB)
  • 128-bit SSE4 SIMD engine
  • 64-bit data paths and registers
  • Energy efficiency optimization
• 1600MHz, 64-bit dual independent frontside buses

Graphics and Displays

Double-wide, 16-lane PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot with one of the following graphics cards installed:

• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory and two dual-link DVI ports
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory and two dual-link DVI ports
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of GDDR3 memory, two dual-link DVI ports, and one stereo 3D port

I wonder what they will announce at MacWorld 2008...

How to Afford Anything

Happy New Year!

I just read a great article from Ken Rockwell and I want to share it with you.

The article is here and is called "How to Afford Anything".