Well I came across a “problem” the other day in Rails. It turns out that Rails is not exactly thread safe at the CGI level. What this really means is that it waits for a file upload to finish before another can happen, which for a busy file uploading site is not actually good. But, since I have read that this is not as big of a deal as you would have thought if using Mongrel because it magically handles multithreading requests and only offloads the request to Rails once it has finished, meaning that it is only blocked whilst being mime parsed etc, which is not that bad. But whilst thinking oh shit I came across Merb, which is another Ruby framework that is really cool and extremely lightweight meaning its nice and fast. It also allows you to pick from a selection of ORM providers such as Sequel, Datamapper and of course ActiveRecord. The main advantage is that it has its own CGI handlers and effectively handles multiple file uploads concurrently which is big benefit.

This does not mean that I am now going to switch over to Merb – infact not a chance. Rails is now very very good at what it does and has a million plugins that are very useful (most can also be used in Merb) and it is very useful for the actual application side of the system. It has so many useful features that its hard to explain them all. But it does mean that I can use Merb for all file handling activities. Its fast and allows me to handle multiple files effectively. In fact it was my original plan that we would someday move file handling off the main app to another server just so that the system can run the application so much faster. As it turns out, this is what some very heavy traffic sites have begun to do which means the idea isn’t totally crazy. You might as well let things do what they are good at hadn’t you? Another good thing is that we can share code between the Rails and Merbs apps. Like I said, Merb lets you use ActiveRecord which means all the models are available in both apps without any code duplication so it makes sense.

I am sure that you have already noticed but I have now added a Meebo chat box on the site. I do not know how often I will be online because I don’t get much chance these days but I thought it was cool and you never know, I could be on one day

It’s now coming along nicely, if a little slow at times. John is currently working on the coming soon pages and blog which should be ready at the end of the week. This should help us to get past the Google sandbox effect when we release in a few months (hopefully ) and also allow to get details from people who are interested. There will be a bit of advertising done just to get the word around so that people know who we are and what we are doing by the time we release, or else it will be more work trying to get customers later on. I am continuing working on the security layer. I have had some problems with the logic, but it seems to be coming together alright. I have been trying to create a customizable privilege system based on the smallest amount of tables and code as possible to make it “simple” but as flexible as possible. But that obviously brings its own complications. I still believe that onceI have done that though the rest should be more plain sailing. I still have to put proper file handling methods in place because we will be distributing files over the network but until the security layer is completed there is no point in doing this. Everything else is just built on top of the security/file system layers so should make more sense once the libraries are in place to handle those. I plan to go through the interface with John next week or the week after (depending on how this week goes) to tie the two together so that we have a prototype system in place to demo to potential customers.

SmellBeautiful.co.uk is still being developed by the guys at Arpey Internet and I look forward to what they have done. I have not received any preliminary designs back yet so have nothing to show you as of now, but I will as soon as I have something to show.

I am taking a leaf out of Carl’s book and putting my blog onto Technorati. I honestly did not know that you could add it yourself. I thought that they somehow managed to find you based on links from other blogs that they have on file. Obviously not

Here is the code:

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/jfv9bewjq5″ rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

Who knows, it might bring in a few new readers.

I am at the point that I need to get a server for my store, blog and forum. I am looking about for a good deal but was wondering if anyone knew of any good services out there with servers in the UK. I say the UK because the store is currently only available here (with other European countries later) so I would like it to be slightly more responsive, although with the speed of some hosting companies these days it might not make much difference even if the servers were in the states. But I believe that there are now services and certain shop reviewers that will note what country the shop is based (well the server) and it could look a little dodgy when I am meant to be serving only UK people if it based in Timbuktu.

So any recommendations will do. I am still looking into whether to get a full blown server or just a VPC. As Carl mentioned to me before, perhaps one of the Bitfolk VPC solutions will do the trick. So any recommendations would be greatly appreciated allowing me to weigh up my options.

Thanks.

First of all I will start by saying that I like the new Apple Macbook Air, I like it a lot. But why oh why are we getting ripped off once again. It’s not that the laptop is too much money, because when you compare it to the Sony equivalent they are about the same price, which is unusual for apple as they normally like charging loads more. It’s just that the price in the states is $1799 which as of this morning works out to £919.68. But somehow the price is magically £1199. Thats almost £300 more! Actually it is more like £200 because of our difference in VAT which they have no control about. The thing is, they will still give us all this shit about how it costs more to do business here. How the hell does it cost £200 more to do business here, thats just utter crap. So they are telling me that it somehow costs them ~20% more to do business here than in the states. I just don’t believe it. Jesus the plane must come over head here from China, so cant they just push a few off. That should save them some money From what I understand, there are also certain tax breaks for computer equipment, thats why Sony made sure that their Playstation 3 was classed as a computer and not just a gaming system. One thing is for sure though, I wouldn’t like to be in Germany at the moment because they are getting charged 1699 EUR which equates to £1282.83! That’s only because of the increase of the Euro because they used to have things cheaper than us when the pound was the strong currency. The thing is i can sort of understand a slight increase for the foreign markets because they have to get things translated and different hardware etc, but we are English – the same bloody language. I know there are certain subtleties but we shouldn’t have to absorb these costs – especially for the French

So basically i think you can safely assume that I wont be buying an Air anytime soon. But it would work out the same price to get a flight to the states, stay there one night, but a n air and come back. Thats the same price thank you and a weekend trip. makes you think doesn’t it. But for me, the main reason is because I am brassic and I wish that I have £1200 to spend on anything to be honest

Update: I had noticed but forgot to mention that they are charging £9 for that little shitty remote that comes for free with the other laptops. I think they have definitely got their ripoff hats on for this one.

Here is my final logo for SmellBeautiful.co.uk. I like it because its simple but reflects what the shop is somehow. I hope you like it. Thanks have to go to John for polishing off the design somehow. He changed it in little ways that made it that little bit better. I will be posting some of the templates that I get back from the ecommerce design firm as soon as I get them.

Note: You have to click on the image to view the high quality image. WordPress just  resizes the image so it looks a bit rough

Well I have finally managed to get the details sorted and the contract signed so I should be receiving my finished online store in mid February. It will hopefully be just in time for the Valentines day shopping spree although don’t think that I will be able to get much business because of the lack of advertising, so I don’t think that it will make as big of an impact as I would like but still, anything is better than nothing right? I will keep you up-to-date and will post some of the initial designs that I get back onto the site for you to check out. So any constructive criticism would be great as I would like the site to be at least functional if not the best design in the world. After all whats the point of having the best looking shop online if no one can find anything that they are looking for?

Well I’m sorry for the downtime recently. It appears that UK2 somehow managed to turn off the database and then magically get it back up again, then saying that it was never down in the first place :s Can you believe those guys. Still, it is now “magically” back up again so thats all that really matters. I used to think that UK2 were alright, but it now appears that it is full of non technical people who to be honest, cant even spell. I mean check out the email below which is what I received back from them. They cant even seem to answer John back about how he can park his domain on his space. So far it has been moved through 3 different levels of support, moved from low priority (which John put it in at) to critical by them and it still hasn’t been sorted. Its all going to pot it seems.

=================

Dear Customer,

Please clarify your problem, is your domain name landoweb.com? If it is, so this one work fine [sic], I doesn’t receive [sic] any error messages. Thank you for using our service. If you have any questions and/or problems, please contact us.
Warm Regards,

—
Nikolai
1st Line Customer Care
UK-2 Ltd

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I came across this older article about in-house programmers on joel and found it quite amusing. It is based on a talk he made at Yale and here is a little bit for you to ponder -

“And there are two reasons this is so frightening: one, because it’s not a very fulfilling career if you’re a programmer, for a list of reasons which I’ll enumerate in a moment, but two, it’s frightening because this is what probably 80% of programming jobs are like, and if you’re not very, very careful when you graduate, you might find yourself working on in-house software, by accident, and let me tell you, it can drain the life out of you.”

Sounds like something where I used to work