From Two 2 Twelve

It's 2am, Do You Know Where Your Log Files Are?

So, I was having just another ordinary night, you know, where you’re converting some video files for your iPhone (what? you don’t have an iPhone?) instead of doing something truly productive, when I received my first “low disk space” warning on my Macbook Pro. This came quite to my surprise as I had thoroughly inspected my disk space usage that very morning (yes, I’m a power-geek) and noted 60GB was available. Now, considering the video in question I was encoding was roughly 30MB, I concluded this sudden inflation of used space wasn’t a possible side-effect of my extra curricular encoding activities.

To investigate, I ran a quick WhatSize in hopes to find the culprit and found it was coming from my very own OS X Log files. Now, being in a full-blown panic state, not knowing if my logs would keep inflating—rendering my computer useless (It could happen?), it took a great deal of restraint to not just delete every log file I could find, but instead I googled it to get some insight on what exactly one should do in this situation. Sure enough, deleting every log file in sight was the preferred solution, so I did just that.

After this entire ordeal, I’ve concluded this is in fact, quite a unique problem, but considering this is my 6th time cycling my logs (since that first night) i’ll take my chances and bet you’ve had (or will have) the same problem at some point.

Now if you are however, currently experiencing this same issue, I have indeed conjured up a somewhat more elegant solution then the constant metal juggling of your log file sizes with a spare finger on the “delete” key. It’s a little, freeware application called OnyX and can be scheduled to run and clear your log files automatically. There are other applications that do this same function aswell (Cocktail to name one), so if you find something your more partial too, firstly, clue me in ;-P and secondly, make sure it’s set to cycle all log files.

Transmuting this blog...

Up to now this blog has focused mainly on my personal web endeavors and various technical ramblings of that sort. However, lately i’ve been compelled by the possibilities of blogging and it’s ability to influence others based on ones personal experiences (yeah, I’m a bit late catching the blogging boat). As a result of this revelation, I have been inspired to transmute this blog into something that encompasses more aspects of my persona (which could be good or bad for the general public, we’ll see).

You can now explore my web portfilio, photographical hobbies, attempts at becoming a rockstar, and fascination with moving pictures.

Hopefully you’ll find something of mutual interest here, or perhaps be introduced to something new. Either way given the broadness of content to be contained, there’s certain to be a high level of ambiguity, which I’m hoping could make things a bit suspenseful, no?

Collective Consciousness Indeed

It appears the folks over at Ajaxian.com are having parallels thoughts to my own and have recently reported on a new project called “ProtoSafe” enabling Prototype to be more 3rd party friendly.

It’s not the most elegant solution, however it surely beats methods I’ve used in the past for using multiple javascript libraries (refer to my last article for details).

Head over to Protolific and check it out for yourself.

Why Not To Exclusively Use One Javascript Framework

Since I began using Ruby on Rails I’ve never really thought of using any other javascript framework except the standard Prototype/Scriptaculous pair regarded as the rails standard. I mean, who could blame me, with all those JavaScriptHelpers and fancy RJS templates to entice you. But, don’t get suckered it by these mere facades, as a result, your application may suffer. I’ll explain…

While programming some additions to my photo hosting application, 72photos, I found the need to add functionality that was particularity difficult to do in Prototype. I’ll spare you the actual details, but as a result of this conundrum, I turned to another Javascript framework, which was, what I believed was the enemy, until now…Mootools. Sure, I heard the hype surrounding mootools of late, however, my loyalty to Prototype/Scriptaculous clouded my judgment to explore it more throughly. When I decided to give a decent look through mootools documentation, I noticed it’s very elegant syntax and it surely made more sense in areas such as event handling.

Where am I going with this exactly? Well, If you’re currently loyal to one Javascript framework and it works for you, I’m not suggesting to break out of your current comfort zone. However, I wouldn’t suggest putting aside features or avoiding them because your framework doesn’t support what your trying to do or would take more time then desired to implement. There are other options and I advise you have a look around regardless. Theres no problem using 2 or even 3 separate frameworks in 1 application, surely you’ll have to watch out for incompatibilities, but theres always a workaround.

Personally, I love Ajax/Javascript, it gives life to what would otherwise be a stationary application. A word of advice…If you’re one who relies on RJS and JavascriptHelpers in rails, I highly recommend learning exactly what those helpers do and how to reproduce that particular code in pure javascript unobtrusively. You will benefit with such knowledge in future endeavors.