Category Archives: Reviews

Rails vs. Tarantula

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There are times when you, as a lone developer, simply don’t have time to write tests.

It’s bad but can happen, but I can guarantee that even if your application is small or simple it probably does contains some bugs, especially if you are forced to write it on the fly and fast (which should be the only reason to excuse your lack of tests).

Sending an application straight into production without running tests is bad, I can’t stress it enough.

However there’s a solution to have some little tests running prior in distributing your app: Tarantula.
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Xslimmer review on Snow Leopard

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XslimmerLogo
There are times when you want to optimize your system, probably because you are starting to notice slowdowns or for the sake of saying “my OS is uber clean now”.

Whatever reason you are up to, you may want to check out Xslimmer.

Xslimmer is one of the utilities that can strip out unneeded files from your applications.

For example, before Snow Leopard we have seen what Universal binaries are.
A Universal binary (also called “fat binary”) contains code for two architectures: PPC and Intel, so, through Rosetta, a Mac OS X was able to run the code for the proper platform; the “problem” lies in the disk space usage.

Now we can see that universal binaries are expanded with other code: PowerPC, Intel, Intel 64, etc., along with language files; every bit of this stuff takes up disk space, and this is where Xslimmer comes into play, by stripping what your architecture/language doesn’t need.
It recovers valuable disk space and boost application startup.

Xslimmer have a built-in blacklist, which contains applications’ names that are dangerous to slim, so it will automatically skip them.

Xslimmer main interface

Be careful what you strip stuff in Snow Leopard though, and always make backups preferably on another disk, since there’s no point of having megabytes of backed up stuff lying on the same disk if your mission is to recover disk space, because when using the backup feature you are up to remove data from a source only to move it to another point on disk.

Another feature of Xslimmer is that it handles the new HFS+ compression introduced in Snow Leopard.

In Snow Leopard applications are in compressed state, decompressed on the fly when the user requests them.

There was a bug in version 1.7.1 that actually skipped the recompression, but, developers told me, was out only for one day.

The application does the job promised, and I can recommend it for curious, SSD or power users; however in those times disk space and performance is abundant, tampering with files this way can be not advisable on a critical platform, therefore always make a backup.

A word about performance before and after slimming applications: for me it starts to be noticeable on:
- slow computers
- starting up very big applications

Xslimmer features also a slick interface and support seems to be very cordial and fast.

$14.95, trialware, download here.

Glimmerblocker: block ads in Safari 64 bit mode on Snow Leopard

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GlimmerBlocker
Safari AdBlock worked quite well, however since Input Managers are finally totally discontinued in Snow Leopard we can’t use it in Safari running 64 bit mode.

In fact, as the developer states, a new version of Safari Adblock is out in the wild but requires you to run Safari in 32 bit mode, by checking the appropriate flag in Get Info window of Safari.

But since I’m running a 64 bit operating system, kernel and application, I took a step further and began hunting for the appropriate tool and seems that I found it.

GlimmerBlocker doesn’t hack Safari, instead it runs a local proxy to filter ads, pretty neat if you ask me.

And for this reason after the installation you won’t find preferences directly in Safari, instead you’ll find them in your Control Panel, directly in 64 bit mode (PrefPanels that are still 32 bit requires you to reopen the whole Control Panel in 32 bit mode).

The only thing is that when blocking an ads, Adblock removed visually the ads, without leaving empty spaces, meanwhile GlimmerBlocker does (depends on the site you are visiting); however this doesn’t change the fact that it’s an excellent replacement.

There are also other solid features, ranging from creating your own lists, hacking with javascript to let a page behave like you want and showing youtube download links. By running a customizable proxy transparently like this possibilities are infinite, like using it with other browsers and other native applications which uses http. You can even setup your iPod or iPhone to filter ads when over WiFi.

Thumbs up for this software.