Mentalized comments http://mentalized.net/journal/ Movable Type http://mentalized.net/favicon.ico http://mentalized.net/skins/substance/images/mentalized.gif 2010-03-02T13:06:07Z http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/02/mentalizednet_in_2009/#comment3288 Comment on mentalized.net in 2009 2010-01-02T22:54:06Z Jakob S http://mentalized.net Haha, yes, that page should come with a warning label.

Unfortunately, that’s the nature of the beast, I guess. The problem with animations is that they are… well, animated.

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/02/mentalizednet_in_2009/#comment3289 Comment on mentalized.net in 2009 2010-01-03T17:44:42Z Casper Fabricius http://casperfabricius.com It will be great to see more activity on your weblog :) I think it can be hard enough to do a new blog each month, so once per week would probably be completely unrealistic for me - but if you keep it up over the next couple of months, it will probably push me to more activity as well ;)

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3290 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-08T16:29:48Z Hvítur http://www.hvitur.is/ How spoton ..The outside world has become a distant memory.

It is time to exit Cyberspace and visit the Outside World for an hour or two.

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3291 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-08T17:30:22Z Peter Theill http://commanigy.com Great article!

It’s spot on .. I usually click “Later” several times before updating because I’m opening the application to use it! Having clicked “Later” three times, however usually causes me to update it with a grunt :)

I like the Google approach which just update your application if it’s a minor release (I have seen this done for gtalk and google desktop). For major releases it downloads the application in the background and notifies you if you haven’t started the application for a while (did it for Google Chrome).

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3292 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-09T07:45:07Z Richard Uhtenwoldt http://sonic.net/~sielskr Well, if you’re really interested in updating software out-of-band, look at the Linux distributions: they have that down pat. Particularly, look at apt and Arch Linux’s pacman. On Debian and Arch Linux (and probably all the rest) even apps like Firefox that have their own update machinery are usually updated using the standard out-of-band updating mechanism (namely, apt in the case of Debian, pacman in the case of Arch Linux).

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3293 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-09T11:25:26Z Jonathan Hollin http://urbanmainframe.com/ I use an app called gBrowser - http://www.immaterialgoods.com/gbrowser/ - for image viewing on my Mac. gBrowser has a lovely handling of updates. You still get an “update available” notification on launch (or when an update is detected) but instead of just “apply” or “later” you have also have the option to “install on quit” - which does just that.

So your flow is only marginally interrupted and the updates still get applied. I’d love to see more software updating this way.

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3294 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-10T18:34:45Z Alex Gordon http://fileability.net This blog post inspired me to fork Sparkle and improve the experience a bit.
http://github.com/fileability/ReSparkle

It downloads updates in the background and only prompts users to install updates when they’re quitting. That is, when the potential for interruption is at its lowest.

If you’re lazy, there’s a prebuilt example at:
ReSparkleTest

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3295 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-10T20:31:15Z Jakob S http://mentalized.net Richard, that’s a great point, I had totally failed to consider apt, yum, and others as great examples of out of band updaters. The fact that I have chosen Linux distros because of their package manager just goes to show how important it can be.

Jonathan, I’m sure there are quite a few applications doing this properly - luckily. SubEthaEdit is one, gBrowser is one I didn’t know of.

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3296 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-10T20:39:03Z Jakob S http://mentalized.net Alex, that is plain and simple a can of awesome. I am so hoping that will make it into Sparkle proper and from there into a ton of the apps I use. Thank you for putting your code where my mouth is.

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/08/the_tyranny_of_software_updates/#comment3345 Comment on The tyranny of software updates 2010-01-15T07:43:38Z Rasmus Rønn Nielsen http://rrn.dk What a fine introduction to this article, well written!

What I’ve been wanting for years is some kind of general OS update mechanism. This should work so that when I have the time to update my apps, I just ask the OS to update all apps in the system. Just like Ruby’s “gem update”, just for apps!

Software providers should then be able to push out new updates via the OS. I know there’ll probably be some serious security issues to consider, but the user experience would be smoooooth :)

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/22/activerecord_oddity_of_the_day/#comment3347 Comment on ActiveRecord oddity of the day 2010-01-22T11:04:17Z Chopmo http://chopmo.dk Pretty obscure behaviour.

And I’m surprised that the assignment does not yield 1?

Ie. I would have expected:

>> person.height = 169,5
=> 1

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/22/activerecord_oddity_of_the_day/#comment3348 Comment on ActiveRecord oddity of the day 2010-01-22T20:25:09Z DHH Note that 169,5 is declaring an inline array, not a floating point. And using a floating point for height is probably not a good idea in any circumstance. You want to use a decimal, if anything.

The correct behavior here probably should be an exception. PDI a patch ;)

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/22/activerecord_oddity_of_the_day/#comment3349 Comment on ActiveRecord oddity of the day 2010-01-23T09:47:27Z Jakob S http://mentalized.net I realize that I am trying to assign an array to an integer, that was basically the bug I ran into.

The behavior is fairly odd, though, and it’s good to hear that an exception might be warranted. I’ll add it to my PDI list ;)

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/31/freelancing_lessons_learned/#comment3351 Comment on Freelancing lessons learned 2010-01-31T21:15:20Z Casper Fabricius http://casperfabricius.com As you say, it’s pretty scary to be responsible for your own income, especially when you are just starting out. I don’t do my own books, I leave that to the accountant, but it has helped me a lot to always maintain a simple cashflow spreadsheet. Everytime I spend money I put it in there, and every time I write an invoice I put it in there - a couple of days after the deadline. Fixed expenses also go there, my salary, the taxes - basically anything that goes in and out of my company bank account. That way, I can always look at my at cashflow and say to myself: OK, if I don’t make a single dime from now on, I can still go on for so and so many months - gives me some peace of mind :)

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/31/freelancing_lessons_learned/#comment3352 Comment on Freelancing lessons learned 2010-02-01T15:14:34Z Wojtek Szywalski http://twitter.com/wojteksz Well done. Useful post, thanks.
Regarding expenses I use something like that to trace my money.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkIXC3D8GtkNdDhFVmdhNnBDWUgxRV9tLVBkSmRXd3c

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/31/freelancing_lessons_learned/#comment3355 Comment on Freelancing lessons learned 2010-02-13T09:43:16Z henry schilitzar thanks for the post this is a great lesson learned

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/01/31/freelancing_lessons_learned/#comment3356 Comment on Freelancing lessons learned 2010-02-16T07:20:58Z Jacob Tjoernholm http://chopmo.myopenid.com Jakob and Casper, thanks for sharing this. It actually cleared up a few question I had been wondering about.

Although I think the part about being consumed depends very much on the kind of company you’re building. I know a few people who started a company (invariably named Holding) only to go work on long J2EE contracts. Typically with the client being the company they used to work for. :-)

Very interesting to hear your thoughts.

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/02/17/webkitbased_xbox_dashboard/#comment3357 Comment on Webkit-based Xbox dashboard 2010-02-17T12:49:40Z Rasmus http://whiskeytangofoxtrot.dk Whoa!
/jawdrop

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2009/12/17/browser_size_awareness_at_google/#comment3360 Comment on Browser size awareness at Google 2010-02-26T12:31:12Z Patricia (Agentur Vergin) http://www.agentur-vergin.de You just took the words out of my mouth! Isn’t it part of the luxury of having a “big” screen resolution to be able to have several application/browser/whatever windows open next to each other and being able to use them almost simultaneously???

Great post!

]]> http://mentalized.net/journal/2010/02/20/happy_8_year_birthday_mentalizednet/#comment3361 Comment on Happy 8 year birthday, mentalized.net 2010-03-02T13:06:07Z bucksgen http://www.portablesolarpanels-forsale.com Congratz!

]]>