MugTug Darkroom, Online/Offline Photo Editing

For those of you who don’t know, a few weeks ago I joined a project called Darkroom from MugTug.com. It’s an image processing application using cutting edge HTML 5 features such as the <canvas> element, localStorage, and application cache, and all the editing (and most of the GUI) is done client side using JavaScript, so it works even without an Internet connection.

Yesterday it was demoed during the Google I/O 2010 Keynote Speech:

There’s currently a development version live, feel free to visit the site and try it out!

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Just Moved to RackSpace Cloud Servers

Sorry for the down time, I just moved to RackSpace and got everything up and running.

I had some problems migrating WordPress and getting it working, which stemmed from the fact that it was using too much memory. I ended up doing a fresh install of WordPress with a fresh installation of each plugin I wanted to keep, but on some pages I still occasionally got an error saying too much memory was being allocated. After some searching I discovered that the “measly” 32MB max. memory allocation in my php.ini wasn’t enough for the latest version of WP, and I had to up it to 48MB. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever encountered this error before.

Over time I’ve noticed as WordPress has become heavier and more resource intensive, and I have a feeling that the plugin mechanism is slower than built-in functionality would be. I think WordPress is a great tool and it’s fantastic that it can (usually) be set up in 5 minutes, even by novice users. However, I’d like something more customized and with better performance, so once I have some spare time I think I’ll redevelop my blog using Django.

Anyways, in the next few days I’ll start to rebrand my site and add more community features, including project repositories and bug tracking. This should make it easier for users to report bugs for the Color Management Firefox Add-on, contribute code and add translations.

DreamHost Account Upgrade

So, DreamHost is upgrading their infrastructure, to go green and save money. During this process there could be technical difficulties, so as a reward to customers who take a risk and volunteer to be migrated first they’re offering unlimited disk space and bandwidth for free, forever! I volunteered, and not only do I now have unlimited storage and bandwidth, but it turns out my account was already moved over, so I essentially got it for doing nothing. If you have a DreamHost account, it might be worth volunteering.

I Switched to Dreamhost

Sorry for the downtime last Monday. My virtual dedicated server plan for GoDaddy expired and I switched to Dreamhost.

GoDaddy’s customer service has really gone down the drain since I first went there. I only went with them in the first place since it was recommended by a professor I knew, and there’s a few things I never liked about it. For instance, why does a domain name registrar have spokesbabes? It seems kind of low brow, and as a man it feels demeaning. Another major problem I have with their site is the UI is a gorram cluster fudge; I’m trying to keep my site family friendly, but you get my meaning. And then there’s the automatic renewals that you don’t know exist until they’ve already charged your account.

Dreamhost is a lot better. Since it’s just hosting I can’t install my own software, but that wasn’t something I did a lot of anyway. It’s also a lot cheaper. I had multiple hosting accounts with GoDaddy and switched to a VDS since it was cheaper to put all my sites on there. At Dreamhost though, you can host multiple sites on one hosting plan. My GoDaddy VDS cost over $300 a year, but Dreamhost only costs me about $70 per year (I got $50 off with the coupon code “50Bones”). Network speed for Dreamhost appears to be faster too.

Also, Dreamhost offers free privacy when you register domains. At GoDaddy I had to pay about $13 per year per domain for that service.