Full Speed
[ March 13, 2012 ]
Weekend Troubleshooting
A few links discovered during a 2-day-long website migration and troubleshooting session:
- Testing SMTP AUTH connections
- A quick introduction to Perlbal
- Reducing MySQL Memory Usage for Low End Boxes
[ September 23, 2008 ]
SquirrelFish Extreme
Last week, the fine folks who work on Safari announced their latest JavaScript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme (SFX). I’m not normally one to run nightly browser builds, but in light of my recent performance testing, I decided to give this one a shot.
My first impression was that this is definitely not production-ready code. The browser crashed several times on me during the process of capturing the benchmark. But when I did get the tests to run, it was fast. I mean visibly fast. Much faster than anything else I have on hand.
As before, the testing wasn’t extensive. I still haven’t tested Firefox 3 with TraceMonkey. The only test I performed this time was running the Safari nightly through Dromaeo. Here’s how it stacks up against the others:
Safari with SFX ran the test in 8184.6ms. The exact build of Safari used for this test is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/528+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.21. The nighly package that I downloaded was labeled WebKit-r36647.
[ September 12, 2008 ]
Dromaeo: Firefox vs. Chrome
Since the recent release of Google Chrome, there has been a lot of benchmarking going on (1, 2). Everyone wants faster Javascript performance, and Chrome delivers.
Well, that’s the impression that I got from using it for a few days anyway. But yesterday I decided to go one step further and verify that feeling of greater performance. Admittedly, this isn’t the most scientific approach, but I have some numbers for you. I used one benchmarking tool, Dromaeo, to see how Chrome stacked up against my workhorse Firefox setup. John Resig has already run a similar comparison, but I wanted a firsthand look at the numbers. Here are those numbers:
Chrome ran the tests in 12658ms. The build of Chrome used for this test is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.29 Safari/525.13. Firefox ran the tests in 13245ms. This was the 3.0.1 release build of Firefox, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1. The tests were run on my Core Duo 1.8GHz 4GB Windows XP SP2 system.
As you can see, Chrome was indeed faster. I’m already using it more and more for Google apps, as I’m figuring that these will probably always run faster in Chrome. Firefox still is my main browser, though, because of the extensions. Chrome won’t be replacing that stuff any time soon.
[ December 16, 2006 ]
Windows Install LinkDump
I have been reading a large amount of information on slipstreaming and unattended installations of Windows XP/2003 lately, so here’s my linkdump of all of the juiciest nuggets:
- DIY Service Pack
- AutoPatcher XP
- nLite
- RyanVM’s Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack
- Automatically Slipstream Windows XP with SP2 and All Post-SP2 Security Hotfixes with a Single Command
- Unattended, A Windows deployment system
- Unattended Windows Introduction
- TommyP’s HFSLIP
[ July 5, 2006 ]
DumpTorrent
I see many searches coming in for “DumpTorrent”. Not having heard of DumpTorrent, I did some searching. Apparently it was a small-ish BitTorrent tracker that never left the experimental stage. I’m not sure if it works, but the source went offline and is barely alive in Google’s cache. In the interest of preserving the tiny tracker, I have mirrored the source file.
[ July 1, 2006 ]
Best BitTorrent Client Software
In their recent BitTorrent Client Comparison, TorrentFreak named µtorrent as the best BitTorrent client. It supports all of the nine essential features:
- Download Prioritization
- DHT
- Selective File Downloading
- Encryption
- Built-in Tracker
- Remote Control
- Super Seeding
- RSS
- UPnP
[ September 23, 2005 ]
BitTorrent for Dummies
I thought that I had seen it all when it comes to BitTorrent. It seems to me that there are plenty of resources out on the web that would tell a person everything he might ever want to know about the excellent file sharing program. But there had to be a “dummy” out there who would go out and write a book on how to use BitTorrent. Get your order in now. This book is scheduled for release on October 3, 2005, and I’m sure it will sell out quickly. ;-)
[ July 6, 2005 ]
Insensitive iTunes
Sam Ruby’s Shameless Pandering prompted me to link to his prior post on the problems with the way iTunes handles XML feeds. The comments in that post explain everything in full detail. If this topic is of any interest to you, please link to Sam’s post and help us get this in front of someone at Apple.
[ May 14, 2005 ]
Java 1.5 for Tiger
Upon opening Limewire for the first time since installing Tiger on my iBook today, I was notified that I was not running the latest version of Java. Normally, on a PC, I would just head over to java.com and download the latest version. I know that Apple has spent a lot of time and money optimizing their Java runtime for OS X, and I certainly would not want to lose the performance enhancements that come with that optimization. So I was extremely happy to find out that Apple already has the first release of J2SE 1.5 for Tiger available on their website. Thanks, Apple.
[ April 14, 2005 ]
Pre-Order Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Save $35
Amazon.com has Tiger available for pre-order with a $35 rebate. That brings your cost for Tiger down to $94.99+tax if you opt for the free shipping. I just placed my order.
Update: Tiger is now shipping, and Amazon is still offering $35 in rebates!
[ January 11, 2005 ]
New Apple Products
Apple unveiled many new products at the MacWorld SF Expo today:
- Mac Mini —- an entry-level G4 starting at $499
- iPod shuffle —- no display, 512MB $99, 1GB $149
- iWork —- Keynote 2 + Pages, the new word processor, $79 or free with new Mac
- iLife ‘05
- Final Cut Express HD
Sadly, there were no PowerBook updates.