Hi,

recently come up to the net 3 important contests to develop android compatible games with flash, the prizes are good, and is sponsored by adobe, if you are interested, are this:

in FGL: ?http://www.flashgamelicense.com/sponsor_pages/adobe/? there are 30.000 USD in prizes, 150 winners.

in mochimedia: http://mochiland.com/articles/announcing-the-mochi-made-for-mobile-contest-with-adobe here are 15.000 USD in prizes, less winner tough

in kongregate: http://www.kongregate.com/pages/mobile-game-contest like 30.000 USD in prizes.

anyway, check the rules of the contest (the detail ones, the user agreement) why usually just for winning or entering a contest like this you are giving to the sponsor a non-exclusive sponsorship.

Regards,

Shadow

Hi,

some weeks ago someone told me that ngnix was better than apache as can handle more users and was more stable with big traffic. as i usually don’t discard the opinions and recommendations i receive, i started researching about this as i didn’t know anything about ngnix. for that, i wanted to write this post so can save you some time looking at the internet . for my research i used sources as serverFault.com and other blog post where it benchmark different php scripts (custom and wordpress blogs).

Apache and ngnix, what is the diference?

the main difference between ngnix and apache is that the way both web servers handle the user requests. apache have a multi thread architecture and ngnix have a unique thread architecture to process the user request. this is the main difference between both, the other important difference are the config files and the rewrite rules, where the format is difference from apache and a new user need to learn this new way to format the htaccess and the config files. other than this, both can manage virtual hosts, aliases,  etc..

Define the goal or purpose to choose.

i always say that there is no a complete tool or a ultimate language and technologies, each decision of what tool to use depends of the requirements of the project. in this case is the same, you need to evaluate your project to decide what to use.

after my research  i found that ngnix have a greater performance, in terms of memory needed, when the ngnix is serving static content. static content is called all what are images, videos, flash, files etc.. and optimized and cached dynamic pages, like a wordpress blog with super cache plugin.

in term of speed both are almost equal, having a difference in favor to ngnix at serving static files.

Conclusion

when i started to research this, i have in mind 2 projects, one of them was a non-optimized sites and the other a highly optimized site that doesn’t have a lot of cached pages but have a lot of static content.

then my conclusion was that you need to choose depending of your project requirement, to use apache or ngnix or both (yes, both can be used at the same time).

if you have a crappy php site, don’t bother you,   ngnix don’t going to give you any improvement, better, invest your time to improve the code.

if you have a highly optimized site and cached most of their pages and you don’t bother to rewrite any htaccess or config file in this new format, ngnix will give you a improvement in your server.

if you have a mixed site, highly optimized, but not too cached her pages, you can have both running, ngnix serving static content and apache serving the dynamic content, this will improve in some way your site with a better load balancing proportional of the percentage of static files are serving.

i hope this help you to decide in this matter, i’ll post later a tutorial of how to install ngnix and apache togheter

Regards,

Shadow

Hi,

today i wanted to write a opinion about this 2 mobile operating system, basically why appeared the new iphone 4 and i was excited to compared with what comes apple to compete with froyo.

Disclaimer: i never have an iphone or an android device even close, my opinions are based on technical spects, and videos, i mainly focus my opinion of this type of product from the point of view of the developer and the end user.

The people who know me, know that i’m always to the side of the open source and liberty, but when it comes to this i try to see the thing in a objective form.

The key of the new era: usability and features

this 2 news OS versions are bringing new really nice features in the mobility devices, as multitasking, video edition (in the case of iphone), photos, music and games. also, to integrate all this features in a small devices as a phone, is needed a new way the user should interact, why there is no a psychical keyboard or mouse. the multitouch technology have helped a lot in this matter but also the engineering to create easy to use commands to use anything (a program, a mobile device, a website etc..) is not something easy (i talk with experience in this matter)

iOS4 is winning over the general user and developer market

the demonstration that apple give i think have been a great defeat for android, and i’m not talking even for the available app’s, the new hardware or even the new especial features, i’m talking that apple is delivering a perfect product for all the markets, the simple user , the hardcore user, and a complete pack for the dev to deploy applications and get revenue from it.

as many developers i hate the apple policy, but need to be honest that the policy is make it possible to deliver a robust product, open a new market for developers and new features for users to enjoy.

android, same history as J2ME

i’m seeing that android is having the same future as j2ME. J2ME is a java api that was promoted to develop mobile application to all devices just building once. the problem with J2ME is that the manufacturers implemented the API as they want, so the portability was impossible and only big companies (as gameloft) could develop games or app’s and port it to the almost all the existent devices. happened the same with android, devices with 8 different types of versions on the market and depending from the manufacturer to upgrade to a new version.

android started ok, as an open source project, delivering features that the competitor wasn’t able to do etc.. (we already know that) and the good of this is as open source, at least i expected a explosion of android powered devices but it started too late, from the day android was announced, take like 1-2 years to start to see android devices in the market, most of them on the high end market.

also, android is not open as apple to the devs (ironic to say this right?). yes, apple don’t approve the app’s that they want. and don’t give any explanation, but at least anyone who pay’s the 100$ can publish and develop commercial app’s. for android, is only limited to countries that have google checkout supported (USA and UK).

The future is in non-fragmentation

of course that new features will give to the users new attraction but from my point of view, the way that android could be a stable and all-users platform is avoiding the fragmentation by the manufacturers. a good solution to make this will be the same as linux make, a repository. so, basically all the android devices can be upgraded to the most newest version and having available the features depending of the hardware where is installed. also a more open policy for developer will be a good thing to have more apps on the store.

anyway, i going to still buy a android device when i can, but of course, is a developer decision more than a normal user

surely it will not help you but is just my opinion

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

for a tweet of one of the person i follow, i noticed the existence of this project.

basically GlotPress provide a web end and administration for translation of phrases for development projects.

is a nice platform, easy to use and the well implemented usability make the translations something fun and not something boring as always . i have contributed with some translations from english to spanish for the gravatar project.

the project is still under development, you can see more info here.

Hi,

the people who know me, see that my talent for the art is less than the normal, even than i tried to learn, my skills in drawing or modeling are very bad (i could improve if i have the time but is impossible right now).

some months ago seeing the tigsource.com blog, i discover this free program called Sculptris, a high poly model program created by Tomas Pettersson. basically make the same as zbrush, of course with a lot less of features but at the same time with a very easy to use UI. you can download/see the trailer or screenshots from here.

is not a big app where you can rely all your 3D work but is a nice tool for people like me that don’t know almost anything of the 3D world and want to draw some concept or idea from his head.

give it a try and let me know what do you think !

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

i going to open and *try* to maintain a new section, called monday tips, where i going to give you some small codes/tips that don’t worth a full post but can save you some ours of work, so  here go:

1)Want to install a DNS? here is a good tutorial that will help you to quickly create a DNS.

2)A good resources of scripts for iptables i found it here

3)Why lawyers don’t run startups a good article about business.

4) copying files using SCP from console is very easy, the syntax of command is:

scp -r -P 22 user@remoteserver:/home/XXX -P 22 user@remoteserver2:/home/XXX

basically there you are copying from server 1 to server 2, if you are logged in a ssh console and want to copy files there, just replace the remoteserver2 with the directory. also, the -P defines the port number, is is 22 as default, is not needed. -r also make it recursive, it going to copy all the contents if a folder is choosed.

and wall for today, i hope you find this information useful

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

when i installed the new 9.10 ubuntu in my new notebook, i realized time after the problem with the clicks in some flash app’s. was really troublesome, like see youtube videos or any other flash app i wanted to use/try.

today, after like 6 months with this problem i found the solution on this blog (in spanish). basically you need to edit the npviewer like this:

sudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer

and add this line before the last one:

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

save it and restart any browser that you have running

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

recently in the net has been a lot of wars, adobe vs apple, html vs flash, etc.. i have seen many of them in the years, like C vs java but now i’m seeing (or maybe is just an illusion why now i’m using twitter and i can see more opinions than before) more fanatism in technology/trends/languages etc..  and i’m seeing in a extreme that going to be harmful, not only for the people but also for the technology in general.

why i’m saying this? c’mon, devs, IT manager, producer, whatever is your role in the IT industry, you should know and have like a maximum rule that the technology itself is not important, is just a tool that give you the power to create/change/make things. the fanatism don’t going to make you more smarter, more rich or anything, just going to aislate your possibilities to develop a good product, why you are focused in the tech and not in the product itself.

one if the first things i learned when i started in programming, is that there is no exist a ultimate language, tool or whatever for a project, the developments methods and tools need to be chosen and used it based in the requirements of the project. like that was how i learned in base of the necessity how to program in JS, php, and flash, and i’m willing to learn any other stuff if is necessary to complete any project.

in resume, i just wanted to say it loud: THE FANATICISM IS NOT GOOD, just be a cold minded guy/girl and choose the best tool/technology for your project

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

just a quick one, let say you have a div that need to have content bigger than it is and need to be able to scroll it, sometime ago i have done it using a scroll using images and javascript but a little while just founded that the overflow property can make this for you !

just in your div class put:

overflow:scroll;

and now if the content of the div is bigger, the scroll bars will be added

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

recently i made some changes in a server where a svn was hosted, part of the changes was the change of the URL, so here i was having problem to commit the changes from my working copy. i tried to make a switch and a switch –relocate but any of them worked, some times is says the repository isn’t the same or some times is executed but the url wasn’t changed.

if you are in a hurry and can’t figure out how to make it work, just execute this command:

find /path/to/your/working/copy/  -type f -name ‘entries’ -exec sed -i ’s|http://url/of/your/old/repository/|http://url/of/your/new/repository/|g’ {} \;

basically that going to replace all the url appearance of your old repository url to the new one, if you have branches or subfolders, maybe you need to execute this several times changing the strings, open a entries file inside the .svn folders to figure it out

i hope it help you

Regards,

Shadow.