Why did I do all this? The main reason was because the one dedicated server was real cheap and scared me. It was a single disk setup with zero redundancy and only nightly backups of critical data that I had to setup manually. I had gotten away with running in that setup for about a year and it was really only a matter of time before that machine failed me. If that hard drive or any part of the machine failed I’d have to rebuild the server from scratch and manually restore the critical data.

After moving to EC2 I have a custom image that I boot with all my configuration setup and an elastic block storage volume with all the database and other changing data stored on it. The volume is easy to take snapshots of and I feel pretty good about the whole setup.

The only gotcha I hit was when I tried to run two SSL virtual hosts off the same IP. Turns out you can’t do that. The recommended solution is to use separate IP addresses to differentiate the hosts. However, EC2 currently only allows you to bind one public IP per instance. I went with the solution to keep one vhost on the standard https port, 443, and the other on a non-standard port. Not pretty, but it’s working for now.

Some light details about the setup:

• Apache virtual hosts are serving the 8 domains
• mod_rails is taking care of the 4 domains that are rails applications. So far I’m very pleased with mod_rails – add a new vhost and bam, it just works. No monkeying with mongrel_cluster yaml files.
• Sending of mail is being taken care of by authsmtp.com. This is new for me but so far I’m happy. I always hate setting up sending or anything related to email on a server. Was happy to outsource this.
• DNS is now being hosted by https://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/. Not a pretty app, but it does the job at a decent price and it’s something I’ll rarely have to tweak.

Thanks to Jonathan for helping with the move and recommending the DNS host. It was nice to know someone who also did a similar migration in case things blew up (he recently moved Round Haus to EC2).

In summary I’m really happy with the new setup. We’ll see how long I stay happy.

note: I was fairly light on the details of the move (post was already long enough). If anyones interested, feel free to email me or comment here.

[NSImage imageNamed:@“NSDefaultApplicationIcon”];

The other funny thing about this is that if you try to use the name “isDeleted”, Xcode squawks up and makes it clear that “isDeleted” is a no no. See image of squawking:

I settled on “isProfileDeleted”. Redundant, but it works a heck of a lot better now (reads and writes!). Why the “name clash” code in Xcode isn’t catching “deleted” I don’t know.

I did some searching and couldn’t find a list of reserved words. If you know of one, please share.

- (id)propertyList

What does it do? To quote the docs:

Parses the receiver as a text representation of a property list, returning an NSString, NSData, NSArray, or NSDictionary object, according to the topmost element.

If you started staring at CFPropertyList(…) functions, just trying to figure out how to read a plist file, the ‘propertyList’ method of NSString is tums for your heart burn.

Also, I’m loving the developer doc’s new “hover over a method to see the short description” as pictured above. If you don’t see this, grab the March ADC Reference Library Update.

defaults write com.apple.Xcode PBXCustomTemplateMacroDefinitions \
'{ "ORGANIZATIONNAME" = "YourCompanyName";}'

To change more of the template, find and edit the template file in “/Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/File Templates”

I’m a

foo
{
}

foo {
}

           -Wil Shipley

My app had some code that would allow the user to spawn an unlimited number of helper processes that went off and did their thing reporting back and taking orders as needed. I’ve finally got to the point where I wanted to limit the number of “active” helper procs to some reasonable value that could be adjusted via preferences. Well, I wrote that code but I forgot to think. I wrote the code such that even when a new request comes in that needed to be queued (due to too many helper procs) I spawned the proc but then “paused” it. This was probably the easiest way to implement the desired effect to the user, but the problem is that it consumed the same amount of resources as before. Nothing was solved. I felt this was a good example of not thinking and paying the price.

Now, time to do some thinking.

Users:bcooke:Movies:blah.mov

If you’re like most sane people, you want to use

/Users/bcooke/Movies/blah.mov

To do this, you just have to prefix your path with ‘posix file’.

via Sundown via google

Default Sound options when using ‘MovieExportDoUserDialog’

QuickTime 7 and iMovie’s dialog

The QT7/iMovie dialog has some clear advantages.

1. Shorter
2. MPEG-4 Audio is re-worded as AAC (as far as I can tell that’s the only difference). People that see this dialog know what AAC is (most?) and know when they want it. However, I’m doubtful that all know that MPEG-4 Audio gets you AAC (I wasn’t, hence this post).
3. “None” is not an option.
4. “Linear PCM” takes the place of “None” and the four int and floating point options.

Do we, as QuickTime developers, have access to this friendlier dialog? Do we have to role our own? Those are questions I’m trying to answer on the side. I did minimal research and found nothing. Right now I can’t devote the time required to keep digging.

• iPhoto: is much faster (seriously, *much* faster with my 5613 photos), has cool date overlay when scrolling, a nice full screen implementation, photocasting (would love this if my fam had macs), calendars, cards and iWeb integration.
• iWeb: The themes look pretty nice. Looks simple enough to use and the themes seem pleasing. I really just loaded it up, clicked around and that was it.
• iMovie: new “themes” seem nifty and added audio effects.
• iDVD: 16:9 and new themes that seem to match iMovie’s.
• GarageBand: I haven’t used GB, but now that it has a podcast “mode” I may give it a whirl for the rare occasion when I record an audio note. You can also bring in video, presumably for a vidcast, but that didn’t seem complete nor the focus. Requires more investigation.
• iTunes: Should they really say this is part of the iLife suite anymore? Seems more appropriate to consider it part of the OS, like Safari and Mail. No comments.

Well, that’s what stuck out to me. Am I happy with the purchase? Yes. iPhoto got lots of attention and iMovie’s themes seem useful. Those being the two apps I use most, I’m pleased. Plus I’m sure I missed tons of stuff in my 60 minutes with it, so I look forward to experiencing and reading more thorough reviews containing the other gems I missed.

update: iMovie now lets you open multiple projects at the same time. That’s very handy, yet sad that it took this long.
update 2: iMovie should have a full-screen edit mode just like iPhoto.