http://www.brightball.com/The most recent articles from the Brightball team.en-ushttp://www.brightball.com/development/cache-miss-stormhttp://www.brightball.com/development/cache-miss-stormI 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 ...PeterFri, 10 Sep 2010 12:19:06 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/the-difference-that-expert-quality-assurance-makeshttp://www.brightball.com/development/the-difference-that-expert-quality-assurance-makesWhen 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. BarryTue, 06 Jul 2010 15:33:00 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/reasons-for-run-away-main-innodb-tablespacehttp://www.brightball.com/development/reasons-for-run-away-main-innodb-tablespaceSo 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?PeterThu, 10 Jun 2010 16:24:00 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/the-wonders-of-ssh-tunnelinghttp://www.brightball.com/development/the-wonders-of-ssh-tunnelingHave 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.ChrisTue, 11 May 2010 08:37:00 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/should-my-domain-name-include-a-wwwhttp://www.brightball.com/development/should-my-domain-name-include-a-wwwIn 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?"BarryThu, 06 May 2010 18:27:00 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/brightball-com-scores-higher-on-yslow-than-yahoohttp://www.brightball.com/development/brightball-com-scores-higher-on-yslow-than-yahooWe'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...BarryWed, 18 Nov 2009 05:02:00 -0500http://www.brightball.com/development/string-localization-with-dynamic-contenthttp://www.brightball.com/development/string-localization-with-dynamic-contentCake 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 th...BarrySat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/wysiwygpro-helper-and-tutorialhttp://www.brightball.com/development/wysiwygpro-helper-and-tutorialI 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.BarrySun, 14 Jun 2009 02:41:00 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/publishablebehaviorhttp://www.brightball.com/development/publishablebehaviorPublishableBehavior 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.BarryWed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400http://www.brightball.com/development/making-the-standard-date-time-fields-a-little-smoother-with-jqueryhttp://www.brightball.com/development/making-the-standard-date-time-fields-a-little-smoother-with-jqueryWhile 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.BarryWed, 22 Apr 2009 01:50:00 -0400