I've posted the slides from today's Sphinx talk at Vancouver Drupal Camp.
Ianiv of NowPublic pointed out that while Sphinx is quick to search, its updating speed is less than that of Xapian, another C++-based search engine. Nonethess, Sphinx is going to dramatically increase speed and search quality for the vast majority of sites.
I'll be doing a talk this Friday at the sold-out Drupal Camp Vancouver on the fast and elegant Sphinx search engine. Sphinx is open source, straightforward, and used by folks like NowPublic and The Pirate Bay to provide scalable search.
Last weekend, I configured my Macbook to dual-boot, via rEFIt, Ubuntu Hardy Heron beta and MacOS Leopard. I'd previously been frustrated when attempting to run Gutsy, but Hardy is a vast improvement: other than some minor glitches, everything important works well.
One thing I found a bit confusing, however, was setting up the snazzy Compiz Fusion rotating desktop cube, so I thought I'd document it because the process is a bit weird.
Click here to view/download a PDF of my presentation for Open Web Vancouver 2008.
After nearly a year of organizing, Open Web Vancouver 2008 went off amazingly. Over two days, we managed to feature over 30 talks in three rooms. Over 300 open web enthusiasts attended and the crowd seemed fun and diverse, with a lot more women attending than I've seen at past conferences. Gerald Baurer managed to organize a SocialCamp track that provided a forum for Vancouver startups and online ventures to show their stuff.
A quick note: Activestate is hosting a get-together for those interested in developing XUL-based applications and FireFox extensions. The event will be held Sunday, April 13, in association with Open Web Vancouver. More details here!
Magic, in the context of software development frameworks, is behind-the-scenes logic that looks after low-level details for you.
I have a love/hate relationship with magic. When it works for you, it's beautiful, but when it doesn't it's intensely frustrating.
Drupal and Rails are magic-driven development frameworks. Django, on the other hand, takes a minimalist approach largely free of magic.
Using CSS sprites is a great way to increase site response by lessening the number of HTTP requests needed to fetch a page.
Updating sprites can be tricky though. Browsers will cache an image containing sprites which makes adding new sprites tricky. The easiest way to get a browser to recache an image containing spites is to change the filename.
On May 9-10, Vancouver will see its second ever Drupal conference, Vancouver Drupal Camp 2008. The event will feature multiple tracks and will take place at two downtown locations.
If you're interested in helping organize or sponsor, let the organizers know how you'd like to contribute on the wiki page!
