Jeremy Knope dot com

So I tried Google Desktop for Mac that was just recently released, beta of course. It’s not too bad, didn’t take seriously long to index either. Not sure it’s any faster than Spotlight. I didn’t really like the lack of grouping that I like in Spotlight results, mail messages grouped together etc. The double-tap-command shortcut is an interesting idea too, and it worked quite well and was kinda cool to browse results in the web page view with pagination. Though when in that view it would open various things within the browser it seems, or at least mail messages, actually not sure about other files. Of course not surprising since the browser probably will open whatever it deems appropriate since it’s just another web page really. I ended up uninstalling it just because it didn’t quite jive with me, I’m not a huge Spotlight use but I still prefer it.

I don’t know if the cause of this extreme increase in memory consumption is from trying out Google Desktop for Mac or not, but I’ve never seen mds at the top of the list of memory usage before, usually it’s OmniWeb after a few days. Anyway, I only made the connection to Google Desktop due to the fact that it uses some spotlight related stuff, like the privacy list and the importers I believe. So since I recently was playing with it I thought there might be a connection. I found one other person noticed same exact thing and they had installed Google Desktop.



This is easy to fix though, and unfortunately I already uninstalled Google Desktop to verify if it climbs up from use at all, just choosing quit process in Activity Monitor does the trick, no need to choose Force Quit. It will come back right after with consumption of probably < 5MB.

I’d recommend trying it out for anybody interested, you might want to check your mds process after though and give it a swift quit to get it’s memory usage down again though after. That is if you notice this happen at all and if it’s at all connected to Google Desktop.

Technorati Tags: google, mac, software

I’m starting to wonder what the future of Zend Studio is due to disappointing updates and the new PHP IDE Project backed by Zend. I’m quite disappointed that the java based cross-platform application that is Zend Studio isn’t a native application to OS X Intel. Supposedly this should work through rosetta, but come on, it’s java, it shouldn’t have to be specific to PowerPC, and shouldn’t be hard to fix this at least for the primary program. I believe my first attempt to actually install Zend Studio on my MacBook Pro was met in similar failure to the friend that warned me that it has issues on OS X intel. I seemed to have installed 5.5 beta just fine and it so far seems fine. But it’s still severly limited since you can’t use the Zend Debugger, Profiler, or Platform features since that requires the Zend extensions which are PowerPC and you can run PowerPC applications but not load shared libraries like those into intel applications. So basically it’s not a 100% package on OS X intel.

The other issue is that I have an expired Zend Studio 5.1, meaning it’s still valid to use but no free updates, so $200 to get 5.2 or 5.5 when it’s out. And for what? Nothing special at all, there’s some cool stuff, like Zend Platform integration is actually something nicer in 5.5 compared to the initial stuff in 5.2. I’m not sure I like the subscription style upgrade program, it benefits you at times like when a huge release comes out like say if 6.0 was coming out when you still had the support/updates. Mine happened to expire before 5.2 or 5.5 so neither are free, I definitely said no to paying to renew and get 5.2 since there was barely anything at all new, and 5.5 isn’t much better either. Not worth it until maybe 6.0.

Also, is Zend Studio going to be continued or is the PHP IDE Project slated to eventually be Zend/PHP’s preferred IDE of choice. Doesn’t seem like it, but the fact that Zend is helping with what would be competition for Zend Studio seems kinda odd. That and the lack of intel support for Zend Studio and Zend Platform makes it kinda uncertain if it’s worth spending money for an upgrade, at least not until there’s a better looking update that provides something more worthwhile. In the meantime I’m seriously looking at Komodo Professional to see if it’s at all a better deal, specially with all the languages it’s capable of handling, including code suggestion for more than just PHP, but for other languages and also CSS and XSL too. The biggest concerns for that IDE so far are performance/snapiness and limited PHP code suggestion. I don’t know if PHP IDE Eclipse project will be good, at least not yet, but Eclipse has been incredibly slow on linux and OS X. We’ll see how things progress with it.

Technorati Tags: php, programming, development, software, tools, zend

Someone made a “visualizer for iTunes”:http://www.tuaw.com/2006/06/21/backlight-visualizer-for-itunes/ that flashes the backlight of the keyboard on Powerbook and Macbook Pros that have this feature, completely useless but cool none-the-less. Or visit the “actual home”:http://www.stewreo.de/keyboarddisco.html of the plugin.

Now someone just needs to make a plugin for Adium or Growl to flash the keyboard when I get a new IM, that’d be neat.

So there hasn’t been any posts lately, but I hope to have some soon, there’s more Subversion I could go into, and always some reviews to do on various MySQL applications that I’m never happy with.

This post I’m trying out the “Blogging Bundle”:http://macromates.com/blog/archives/2006/06/19/blogging-from-textmate/ for “TextMate”:http://macromates.com/ where you can write up some “Textile”:http://textism.com/tools/textile/, html, or whatever in TextMate and invoke a command to post it up to your blog. This is kinda neat. So somewhat geeky but what else happens on this blog? Anyway, TextMate is pretty awesome.

Technorati Tags: textmate, blogging

So you want to setup a Subversion(SVN) repository? Well I know the basics and hopefully I can give a nice to-the-point tutorial on how to get up and running with tracking your source code through SVN. Subversion can easily be used as a personal change tracking system on your local computer, or be used with a team to track changes from everybody and facilititate conflict resolution with similar changes. I also see it as a super undo in case you really manage to screw stuff up. Although proper version tracking requires you getting in the habbit of reguarly commiting changes. Read more for the tutorial (Decided to stop doing full posts on front page, getting LONG)

Update: If your using OS X, check out SvnX for a GUI for manging working copies, and doing some repository actions too.

Technorati Tags: howto, programming, subversion, svn, tutorial

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One of the most popular MySQL management tools out there, phpMyAdmin has become widely used, but I’d have to say it’s one of my least favorites. I did use it back in the day and it wasn’t too bad, some of the features it offers are very useful. It’s one of the few tools to let you do things like rename a table simply, or other move-stuff-around type actions. My discontinued use of it started out with a particular update and there after performing horribly slow on my G3 server. I’m assuming this particular problem could possibly be gone now, but it made me ditch it quite fast. This could’ve easily been some other problem for all I know, but first reaction just was to ditch it and use CocoaMySQL instead at the time. I’ve never used it since partly because I got along fine with various other tools, and also my current employer does not use it due to security concerns. From phpMyAdmin being such a popular application, it’s prone to security holes way more frequently than other tools, mostly because of it being a public accessible tool for your MySQL database.

Shots of both phpMyAdmin themes/styles:

Overview of the ups and downs of phpMyAdmin:

Pros

• Access from any machine, no installation of client software needed
• Robust set of features
• SQL file import and export with reasonable options
• Table operations like renaming, moving data etc.
• Simple tools for copying data or structure from database to database
• Display of row data only limited to your browser ability to render that much html (or just use the pagination)
• Full suite of tools covering querying to privleges

Cons

• Uses frames for it’s interface, can be funky sometimes (would be better with no frames, ajax, even iframes maybe)
• Font sizes of default themes bit wonky on latest one I tried, fixable of course (big on default, tiny on dark)
• UI can be a bit sluggish due to it being a web application, depending on connection speeds etc.
• Can be prone to security holes due to popularity, updates are usually quick though
• Can’t do ‘quick edits’ like some desktop clients allow

The power and versatility of phpMyAdmin puts it at the top for MySQL client tools, but mostly out of personal preference I choose to remove it from my list of clients. The problems with phpMyAdmin are pretty slim, and if you don’t mind a web-based MySQL client, then you probably are already using this, or will at least find it suitable. So far I’m pretty convinced that a web-based MySQL management tool is just not something that will ever jive with me, I yearn for the snappier and cleaner UI of a desktop application when it comes to managing my MySQL databases. Unfortunately most of those bring in their own set of problems as seen in MySQL Query Browser Review and soon to come with reviews of YourSQL and CocoaMySQL.

Technorati Tags: client, database, mysql, php, review, software

I was having a improve-my-TextMate-experience moment and along with making some small snippets to help smooth my coding when using TextMate, I also went thru TextMate’s PHP bundle and applied my preferred formatting to all the snippets in it. It has formatting for conditionals like so:

if(conditional) {
// code
}
else {

}

and require/include sans () (like PEAR standards):

require_once ‘filename.php’;

and some other various cleanups like the random occurrence of # comments and extra tabs & spaces where they shouldn’t be, or at least I don’t think they should be.

So if you have similar coding style, check it out see if it’s an anal enough style for you or not.

“Download Jerome’s Anal PHP TMBundle”:http://jeremyknope.com/files/PHP-tmbundle.zip

Technorati Tags: php, programming, editor, textmate

I’ve decided to do a series of reviews, or maybe a series, on various MySQL client software, primary focus will be on Mac OS X since that’s my platform of choice. I have been in search of a decent MySQL desktop client, since phpMyAdmin does not fit the bill for me, not to mention at work we don’t use it per security concerns.

In comes MySQL Query Browser with probably the better of the UI designs out of the clients I’ve tried, particularly on Mac OS X with a pretty clean design. With tabbed query windows, syntax highlighting, safe row edits, and more Query Browser is a pretty decent regular use MySQL client. What it lacks really is the ability to administer users directly instead of relying on it’s sister application, MySQL Administrator. Also the inability to export an sql dump of a database is also a bit of a let down, another feature of MySQL Administrator.

MySQL Query Browser serves as an excellent tool to edit table structure and test queries. The query window looks like this and support multiple tabs which is very beneficial:

MySQL Query Browser Main Query Window

Table structure editing isn’t bad either, although better on some of the platforms like Windows where more auto-complete works. A sample of a table being edited:

MySQL Query Browser Table Editing Window

Here is a sum up of what’s good and bad about MySQL Query Browser:

Pros:

• Clean UI
• Decent table editing
• Pretty fast
• Handles large amounts of data in view relatively well
• Row editing safe due to having to click edit (this could be a con for some, but I feel less paranoid with it)
• Built-in help
• Query bookmarking (save a cool query for later)
• Query History (go back & forth through it, see cons for a problem with this)
• Simple copy SQL to clipboard feature when clicking a table

Cons:

• Can crash frequently, possibly less on Windows version
• Mac OS X version doesn’t have inline auto-complete for column types (windows one does)
• Foreign key handling is flaky due to crappy errors from MySQL itself (not getting column types EXACTLY matching)
• Lack of SQL dump/export (due to it being featured in MySQL Administrator as ‘backup’)
• Editing rows relies on presence of a primary key, custom queries often data can’t be edited.
• Query history is cool but it executes every time you hit back or next, which sucks for any UPDATE or DELETE queries
• Crashes when your a little to crazy with clicking sometimes (Mac version at least)
• Preferences and saved connections is immensely slow (when accessing to edit or save changes)
• No way to organize connections if you have a ton of them (I’d like that at least…. NO client has that though)

So there is quite a few cons for this, but so far they haven’t out weighed the cons of other clients to make me not wanna use it. I often use it pretty briefly so my experience with it’s problems is usually short-term. Some of the other candidates for consideration and review next are YourSQL, CocoaMySQL, and Navicat. Any other suggestions (taking Mac OS X software and possibly linux software suggestions only) feel free to comment.

Technorati Tags: client, database, mysql, review, software

So I managed to try out MySQL Workbench on Windows to see if maybe that version runs better. Staying true to the drastically different UI for each OS that every MySQL.com tool is like, this one was much different on Windows but seemed to not break so easily. Linux version I even tried but that wouldn’t even start on ubuntu. A promising tool but definitely still beta, but maybe the least beta on windows at the moment.

Here’s a simple shot of the windows version:

Apparently MySQL AB turned out a new tool, or at least new to me, which lets you design data structure in a visual manner, called MySQL Workbench. I was pointed to it yesterday by a friend and never had seen it on mysql.com before. This is a tool similar to software like DBDesigner 4, SQL Editor for OS X, and EOModeler from WebObjects. You create tables and you can link them together via relations using a relation ship line tool, basically creating an ERD that you can output to an SQL file or possibly a database. Now this is kinda cool except that this particular piece of software is beta, and I think when it comes to the MySQL AB tools, this means almost unusable. I must say I’ve liked most of the actual UI design in their tools, and Workbench seems pretty decent too, just falls short at this moment with the beta due to bugs that halt the successful usage of this tool.

MySQL Workbench is available for linux, Windows and Mac OS X and I have only tried the Mac OS X version which very likely might be the only one with the crippling bugs I ran across. I basically couldn’t use the relationship features for generating foreign keys due to some bugs that didn’t let me set foreign keys, let alone remove the lines they generate.

It definitely is a promising tool that could prove to be useful once it’s smoothed out and the bugs that limit it at least on OS X are gone. I’ll be watching it, but I also haven’t had too much use for a tool like this yet, just more want to find a use for one, and maybe once this works better I might find it beneficial.

I’ll provide an update of how it is if the linux version is more usable.

Here’s a simple shot of it: