If you’ve been following me on twitter, you’ve already been tipped off that I recently got an older MacBook Pro. Since it came with Mac OS installed, I decided I would give it a fair, 30-day trial before I move it to Linux. I’m about 3 weeks in, and I’m logging my thoughts publicly so you can hopefully see benefit.

What I’m NOT comparing

In a word: speed. This was a significant hardware upgrade from my last computer, so I’m not going to say anything how everything is so much faster, smoother blah blah because it would’ve been anyway and that’s not useful to you or anyone. Also, virtualization: I know that I can get X or Y if I just use VirtualBox. I’m going to ignore that here for simplicity.

Tools

Before I make stupid lists, I should note that I was working on an Ubuntu Karmic Koala, so I had all of the pre-packaged nice-ities that come with that.

Now, in no order whatsoever:

• Dock – Mac has a built-in dock, Linux has AWN and Gnome-Do Docky. IMO, Linux wins barely because you have more options for customization.
• Terminal – Both systems have a built-in terminal. I’m a bash user and that came with both. One part where Linux shines is that a lot more tools build themselves to be launched by the Terminal by default. For example, try typing “which firefox” in the Mac terminal. Nope.

Continue reading →

Ever since I’ve moved to my own server for my websites, I’ve wanted to reduce the number of HTTP requests per user as much as possible. Here is how I (and you) can use Python to shave 1 more request off that number.

I can do this (and remove a DNS lookup) by updating my Feedburner count using an automated script on my server instead of having each client request it.

Using the FeedBurner Awareness API

Most of the time you only care about getting your total subscribers at the moment. The FeedBurner Awareness API is far more capable than just doing that, but we’re going to keep it simple today.
Continue reading →

After launching Cheqlist last week, I felt compelled to give you a peek under the covers to see the tools involved and why I chose certain technologies. I hope to give you insight for times where you decide what to work with.

Getting started

Before I could really start working on a major project, I had to choose a VCS. I went with mercurial based on a friend’s insistence that I introduce myself to a DVCS (specifically Hg) immediately. I knew what it was but never took time to try it myself. I am very glad I tried it.

Looking back, though, I think git may have been a (very slightly) better choice. Regardless, mercurial has served me very well and I strongly encourage anyone who hasn’t given a DVCS a spin to do so! Continue reading →