Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

Since I upgraded my iPhone 3G (not 3GS) to Apple's iOS4 it has been running slow, and that is to put it mildly. It has been so slow I barely wanted to use  the damn phone! 

Reading a thread in the Apple Discussion Forums, I realised, like most things, when you simply upgrade software there is a bunch of detritus left behind, so following the post, I simply reset the phone through iTunes to factory settings, once done, I went and upgraded my carrier info (which it prompts you to do) and then restored it from the backup (that I made earlier) 

Voila, it is now running pretty snappily again. Joy! 

 

 

Oh yes! Thank you Apple, now iTunes UK has a bunch of films for you to buy or rent! This means I am now going to have to a) Buy more storage b) Get a second job to afford all the films I am going to buy! New films like Cloverfield seem to be about £10.99 to buy whereas older films seem to be about £6.99. You can also rent a number of films for about £2.49 and up depending on the age of the film. The restriction of rental films seems to be that you can rent it for 30 days and watch it as many times in a 48 hour period (reminds me of being in a hotel to be honest). That *that* great, considering that lovefilm (or NetFlix if you are in the US) let you have the DVD as long as you like. Maybe a subscription model needs to be introduced, rather than the old style "Blockbuster £3 a film per night" model. Anyway, I think its awesome news... and a great way for my wages to disappear in a fit of entertainment.

Those clever folks at Aptana famous for their IDE and Eclipse plugins for JavaScript/Ajax, HTML and CSS have released Jaxer, The Ajax Server:

...Jaxer changes all that. Jaxer is the world's first true Ajax server. HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are native to Jaxer, as are XMLHttpRequests, JSON, DOM scripting, etc. And as a server it offers access to databases, files, and networking, as well as logging, process management, scalability, security, integration APIs, and extensibility

You can get it as part of the IDE or download the standalone server, for Windows, Mac and Linux. I dont find this surprising really, since Paul Colton, the CEO and founder is the man behind JRun! Awesome stuff, and I hope to get some examples up to show you soon!

So, after watching today's slightly disappointing Keynote from MacWorld Conference and Expo, I decided to buy, through iTunes, the iPod Touch January Software Update ($19.99 or £12.99). Well, slightly dissapointing really, nothing got installed. I am still waiting on the response to my complaint email. Anybody managed to install it? Its meant to be easy, just buy it and Sync your iTouch, but alas, no luck. EDIT: A comment by sidepodcast below has solved the problem. There was an update for the iTouch that I had to install before installing the application package (to be honest, comparing the sizes of the updates, I think what you buy is simply a license for the software). Thanks sidepodcast!!!

I am not sure if anybody out there has bought the new apple keyboard, but it has some new features and has changed the location of a number of keys. The problem here is that they don't match with the previous keyboards and the keyboard itself comes with no software, but to make use of the features of the keyboard (mainly the function buttons) you can download a Keyboard Software Update 1.1 from Apple's site. More info to come once I install it! UPDATE: If you run software update, it is actually there waiting for me, and a smaller download than from the site. UPDATE: After the updater, all the shortcut keys (sound, brightness, dashboard etc) seem to be the right ones as per the keyboard. Woohoo!

I wanted to put down (for the help of new Switchers and myself) a list of applications I consider a top 10 of commercial (have to pay) applications for OS X. There are so many applications that are free on the Mac, that cover nearly everything you want to do, but for this post I wanted to cover some of the paid for applications. I know there are Open Source alternatives for most of this software, but sometimes there is just software that *IS* worth the few pounds/dollars/euros that it takes to buy them. Please bear in mind, that I am a web developer (or application developer depending on the time of day) so these are focused on what I do. So without further ado here is my list (in no particular order): 1) TextMate http://macromates.com/ &euro 39 This is the "Missing Text Editor" for the Mac. I use this all the time, and there is a CFML plugin for it, for when you need to edit those random CFML files. Obviously for projects I use CFEclipse, but a text editor is always a handy tool 2) QuickTime Pro http://www.apple.com/quicktime/pro/ £ 20 QuickTime already comes with OS X but what you really want is the very cheap Pro edition, if only to watch stuff in full screen, and not to mention its export capabilities! 3) Parallels http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/ $79.99 /VMWare Fusion http://www.vmware.com/beta/fusion/ $ 39.99 (for pre-orders) With the advent of the IntelMacs, we can now run Windows natively or in Virtualisation, so these are the best (maybe only) tools for the job! I classify both of these as one since they do the same job (I have been checking out VMWare Fusion for a few weeks using my BootCamp drive, and I am really enjoying it, it seems faster than Parallels) Don't boot up your Mac without at least one of these! 4) iWork http://www.apple.com/iwork/ $79 I do a lot of presentations and the best software for that is Keynote, it just runs rings round PowerPoint (now if only Adobe Connect would support either PDF or Keynote files!!) I dont use Pages as much, but its still a lot nicer than the interface-cluttering Microsoft Word. 5) Coda http://www.panic.com/coda/ $69 We all have some small sites to manage, and Coda, a new kid on the block brings in some real nice features for this. I think its worth it alone for the CSS and the Site panel (which it automatically creates thumbnails of your sites!) I haven't bought this yet, but I am really liking it. EDIT: the latest version of Coda supports CFML too. 6) Adobe Fireworks CS3 http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/ $299 I am not a designer but I love Fireworks. I have been using it for years and its the best web graphic design software I have used. I know Adobe Photoshop is the daddy but the ability to do everything web design related in one package (down to creating the HTML for you) is just too good. I love this app! 7) Aqua Data Studio http://www.aquafold.com/ $399 There are apps for every database out there, but if you are connecting to a variety of databases this rules. Unfortunately because of the price I have to install Windows and use Microsoft MSSQL Enterprise Manager, but if I could afford this, Windows would end up just being a shell for Internet Explorer. This is a must if you do a lot of database work. (Aqua Data Studio v4.7 is actually free, but it doesn't have all the features I would like it to have) 8) OmniGraffle http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/ from $79 If you are doing a lot of diagrams, be they UML to system architecture, OmniGraffle makes it really nice with very impressive results. 9) OmniPlan http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniplan/ $149.95 I always hated Microsoft Project, there is something evil about it (maybe just because I am a developer) but when I had a go on Omni Plan, I thought "hey, I *CAN* get into project management!". As with OmniGraffle its results are impressive as well as pretty, and hey, if you are going to be staring at something all day, you might as well be staring at something good right? 10) Delicious Library http://www.delicious-monster.com/ $40 This is a great little tool if you have lots of DVD's (and books) as well as appreciative friends who like borrowing them. The main thing about this is that you can very easily create a whole library of your DVD's simply by scanning the bar-code using your iSight camera. You can then have a list of who you have lent out your DVD's too as well as loads more info and suggestions (driven by Amazon I think?) So, there it is, my 10 must-buy applications for OS X. Edit: If you think this post was usefult, why dont you Digg it?

Next week I shall (Hopefully!) be receiving my new black MacBook. This laptop has the following specs as its designed as a presentation laptop rather than a main production machine:

• 2.00GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM-2x512 (not a lot of Parallels actions going on with this machine I guess)
• 120GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm (Fat presentations man, fat presentations)
• Superdrive 6x (To read those CD's and DVD's they give out at conferences)
• No Modem (Who uses a modem nowadays? At a pinch its bluetooth and my mobile!)
• iWorks '06-Z (for the presentations! I have to justify it somehow)
• Apple Mini-DVI to VGA Adapter (Can you believe I had to buy this as an extra??)

Now, here comes the competition, well, kind of. There is no prize really, but I need to name this machine, and I have clean run out of ideas. I had some like "CFE_ONE" or "MR_Presento" but still, nothing good comes to mind. My MacBook Pro is actually named HAL after the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which as you can tell isn't very imaginative hence my call for ideas! (This little puppy will be travelling to all the conferences this summer and showing you all the top secret projects so you will get to see the computer name in case you win!)

I just spotted that Apple has done some UK specific adverts using Mitchell and Web (the guys behind "That Mitchell and WEbb Look" funnily enough). Some of them are copies of the American ads, I just spotted a double page spread in the Metro this morning and lo and behold they are on the Apple UK site! Go check them out!

I found this very handy hint on how to increase the size of a Parallels Windows VM. The problem I encountered mostly was that I could use Parallels Image Tool to expand the size of it but then Windows would not see this, and just see it as unpartitioned space. If I partitioned it it would then just become another drive, rather than expanding the existing drive. Over at the parallels forum there is a great work around this, and I can testify with my new 50GB VM that it works a treat!

Ok, the title is a bit misleading, but if you are using Parallels it isnt. I come across a problem of connecting ColdFusion server (running under OS X) to a newly installed version of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 running under Parallels. After I installed SQL Server, I was able to ping the machine but not connect to it and was getting "Connection Refused" errors in the Datasource setup under CFAdmin. To start off with, I went to check if the service was running. Since it was, I opened up Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft SQL Server 2005 -> Configuration Tools -> SQL Server Configuration Manager. In the manager open the "SQL Native Client Configuration" then "Client Protocols" and double click on "TCP/IP" you should get a window with: Default Port: 1433 Enabled:No Change the Enabled setting to yes. Then, open up Start -> Control Panel -> Windows Firewall and click on the "Exceptions" tab. "Click Add Port...", enter MS SQL as the name and add the port 1433. You should now be able to connect to the MS SQL server from ColdFusion on OS X