I’ve been wondering which image toolkit is likely to result in lower resource usage (especially coming up against the PHP memory limit) for applications like Gallery and Drupal. People used to always say the resize quality was better with ImageMagick versus GD, but I think GD2 closed much of that gap. But what about resources? The best answer I could find was in a thread on metafilter.com where one respondent says

if possible, do yourself a favor and switch to ImageMagick as soon as possible. GD2 runs within the php child, so resizing any image over 640×480 will pretty much take down the process you’re using. On our server, we’d have children allocated 64megs of memory die trying to resize a 1280×1024 image.

While I’m not an expert on server tuning or linux, my understanding is that in your typical usage scenario, you’d run IM as a niced shell process, meaning that 1) the php child won’t crash because it just launches the exec and continues, and 2) the process shouldn’t significantly slow down your server, because it’ll only use ‘free’ resources. This CAN mean that your user may experience a delay between uploading a file and being able to see a thumbnail…

That’s the best I can find for now. I should test it, of course, but for now I’ll take that advice and default to IM until I run into trouble.

I’ve been on a long quest for an email client that I like. Granted, my wish list ranged from simple (must not crash constantly) to less simple (synch address books with online account). Despite high resource usage and some interface shortcomings, I think the new version of Yahoo! Zimbra is it. Finally, something to get me out of Thunderbird instability hell! For me, at least, this is a Thunderbird killer. Well, I thought this was a Thunderbird killer until a zillion problems with Zimbra surfaced.
What's so great about Zimbra? Read on » »

I would say the thing that drives me nuts the most about Gmail, is the fact that every time you delete a message, you’re kicked back out to the message list. Google, taking a page from Microsoft, has decided to do your thinking for you and take this option off the table because you really shouldn’t delete emails. But if I know I will never want that message again, I delete it. And am stuck back out at the message list. This, more than anything has stopped me from adopting Gmail.

It turns out there is a ‘Delete’ and go to next conversation Greasemonkey script that will do just what I’m looking for, but recent Gmail upgrades broke that script. So out of luck again. [Update, June 22, 2009: this script has been fixed. Check it out.]

Over at JimsTips.com, Jim suggests using Gmail Keyboard shortcuts (Gmail Help article) deleting with the # key, which does kick you back to the message list and then using the ‘k’ key to move to the next message and the ‘o’ or <enter> key to open the message. The thing I dislike about that is that it is three page loads when it should be two (in other words, why do I have to see that damn message list?).

So my similarly kludgey, but somewhat more elegant solution (or maybe not) is to:

• Turn on keyboard shortcuts (in Settings -> General).
• Create a label named ‘Delete’ (or ‘aaDelete’ if you want to be sure it is at the top of your label list).
• When reading a message, type ‘l’ (that’s a lower-case L) to bring up the label list.
• Hit the downarrow key once to select my top aaDelete label at the top of my list
• Hit the ‘k’ key to move to the next message.
• When I’m all done, I can view the messages deleted aaDelete and select and delete them all.

Yeah, stupid, crappy, cumbersome way to do it. I know. Tell Google.

Now if only they would come up with a proper way to view all unlabeled messages, but my solution to that is reasonably workable, if a bit cumbersome.

Some friends went rock climbing in Siuriana, Spain and brought back some hot chocolate for us. I don’t think they know what SEO stands for and I have no idea what it is in Spanish, but it made me think that this hot chocolate company should have an outstanding website.

Hot Chocolate for SEOs

SEO Hot Chocolate - back

The most foolish things I’ve done in my life have been for neither love nor money, but simply for free ice cream. One spring, when I was about ten years old, in return for an ice cream cone, I swam out to the ice in Lake Champlain, only about 25 feet, but in water cold enough to kill. Of course, I was ten. But many people do things nearly that stupid for something “free” which could be purchased with about 10 minutes wages.
How does 'free' cloud our judgement » »

Every once in a while I file a support issue with some service I use. The customer service rep confidently replies with an answer. The last one, at a place I won’t name, suggested that I clear my browser cache. Of course, I had done that, multiple times on multiple browsers. That’s fine though. That response probably works most of the time. But here’s the thing: he then marked my ticket as “Closed”, problem solved. This is the second time in a couple of months that I’ve had to deal with a business who operates this way.
How I *want* to be treated -» »

Arrghhhh! You go to look at your gmail with Thunderbird (or Shredder if you’re running the TB3 beta) and it just spins and spins and hangs up and you can no longer access your email via Thunderbird. I’ve had this happen with several versions of Thunderbird and I thought I’d tried everything – kill the account and reinstall, try a new profile, etc etc. Nothing worked.

This last time, I also got the message

The current command did not succeed… The mail server responded: No messages match. (Failure).”

Finally, that let me find an answer at MozillaZine and Google Groups. I had never seen this suggested before and it’s so easy.

• Put the cursor over the Inbox in the offending account and right click (Windows) and select “Properties”
  

  Mailbox Properties

• Then just click the Rebuild Index button
  

  Mailbox Properties Dialog

I wish I had known that a couple years ago!

I’m listening to a writer for Law and Order, who used to be a crime reporter. He was saying that if you ask any homicide detective, they’ll all tell you that often the killer says “Well he told me to shoot.”
My number one mind control trick revealed! » »