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Cache Miss Storm

Development - September 10, 2010

I worked on the problem recently which showed itself as rather low MySQL load (probably 5% CPU usage and close to zero IO) would spike to have hundreds instances of threads running at the same time, causing intense utilization spike and server very unresponsive for anywhere from half a minute to ten minutes until everything would go back to normal. What was interesting is Same query was taking large portion of slots in PROCESSLIST. I do not just mean query with same fingerprint but literally the same query with same constants.

The difference that expert Quality Assurance makes

Development - July 06, 2010

When we first started out, we listed the thorough quality assurance review as an optional piece of our estimates.  We had this incredibly naive idea that if we gave people the option to save a little money up front that they'd fully understand if there was anything that needed to be tuned up, post-launch.  We learned our lesson...hard.

Reasons for run-away main Innodb Tablespace

Development - June 10, 2010

So you're running MySQL With innodb_file_per_table option but your ibdata1 file which holds main (or system) tablespace have grown dramatically from its starting 10MB size. What could be the reason of this growth and what you can do about it?

The Wonders of SSH Tunneling

Development - May 11, 2010

Have you ever been working on a website and needed direct access to the database, but couldn't get access without using something like phpMyAdmin?  SSH tunneling can solve this common problem and a whole lot more.

Should my domain name include a "www"?

Development - May 06, 2010

In the age of Twitter and Web 2.0, we've started to see a lot of websites drop the standard www from their domain names.  This could simply be a product of people following trends or just trying to be a little different, but the real question is "What are the drawbacks?"

Brightball.com scores higher on YSlow than Yahoo!

Development - November 18, 2009

We're a bit obsessed with performance optimization around here.  It's an itch that can never be fully satisfied because there's always something more that can be done.  Brightball.com is powered by our web application development platform, The Intersect (we're also fans of NBC's Chuck).  The Intersect is the same system we use as the basis for all of our client's projects and we decided to put it to the test at the hands of Yahoo! YSlow.

String localization with dynamic content

Development - June 20, 2009

Cake has a wonderful shell script function built into it called extract that will run through your code and create a .po file full of all of the text contained within your __('My text here') calls. You can then pass these files onto to translators to modify them for your languages. When you want to add variables though, you have to break it up into pieces which may change the context of the phrase. Here's a way around that.

WYSIWYGPro Helper and tutorial

Development - June 14, 2009

I couldn't find any resources on setting up WYSIWYGPro with Cake so I developed this helper along with instructions for total integration with your system. If you've never used WYSIWYGPro, you should check out the demos. I've tried every WYSIWYG editor out there and none of the other ones even come close as far as I'm concerned.

PublishableBehavior

Development - June 10, 2009

PublishableBehavior allows the use of datetime fields for start and end ranges on content. Included functionality allows for checking published status, toggling to published / unpublished status, and adding conditions to a find to properly filter those results.

Smoother date/time fields with jQuery

Development - April 22, 2009

While working with the date/time input fields in Cake I got tired of having to select 3/6 drop down boxes to choose all of the date/time information and specifically of having to select 3/6 drop down boxes if I decided to clear the date. A little bit of jQuery will clear this right up though.