It feels as if I haven’t blogged in ages. I’ve been letting the evenings run away and all too often the prolog to sleep has been a regime of website development, reading and French practice.

One of the most exciting projects I’m working on is a new community for young photographers in the UK. The site is aimed at photographers  at undergraduate level or recently graduated. The website is called www.photographyandmash.com and it offers a place to promote your work and meet other photographers.

Currently the site is invitation only whilst we iron out bugs and figure out what works and what doesn’t. The community is small but the work on there is great and we’re hoping the site will grow quickly. Without logging on you can check our comprehensive listing of London photography events (and we are working on gathering listings for the rest of the UK).

Also, check out our blog or drop me a line (alex[at]photographyandmash.com) for an invite.

Working on an app to parse restaurant and bar data in the US. Found this in an API call for bars in ZIP code 35031. It’s weird that with the internet we’re so connected to the actions and stories of others.

Looking for bars
in BLOUNTSVILLE (35031)
  Calling http://local.yahooapis.com/LocalSearchService/V3/localSearch?appid=
bbMmpXvV34HMVLyx1PGhrbZY
pGVV3oBMxBK.qlux6iiyrXM58IMFGptrdV5DgdgJbKS98DQy63Upjw--&query=bars&zip=35031&results=20&category=
96926057{"City"=>["Altoona"], "MapUrl"=>["http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?q1=3950+Grady+Dr+Altoona
+AL&gid1=14790625"], "Distance"=>["13.20"], "Phone"=>
["(205) 589-2357"], "Url"=>["http://local.yahoo
.com/info-14790625-foxy-s-lounge-altoona"], "Longitude"=>["-86.321531"],
"Latitude"=>["34.071662"], "id"=>"14790625", "Categories"=>
[{"Category"=>[{"id"=>"96926063",
"content"=>"Bars & Pubs"}, {"id"=>"96926057", "content"=>
"All Bars, Pubs, & Clubs"},
{"id"=>"96926059", "content"=>"Private Clubs"}]}], "State"=>["AL"],
 "Title"=>["Foxy's Lounge"],
"BusinessClickUrl"=>[{}], "ClickUrl"=>["http://local.yahoo.com/info-
14790625-foxy-s-lounge-altoona"],
 "Rating"=>[{"LastReviewIntro"=>["Well I lost my wife
 to this
place. She started work at this place about 5 months after
 me got married.
We needed the money.
 I didn't like the idea but she asured me it would be ok. I should of
never let her do it.
Late nights, never seeing me and the kids, her attitude, and
everything
changed. She left me and
moved in with the bouncer. etc Things ended badly. I hate
 that place and never get
 cought dead there."], "TotalReviews"=>["2"],
 "TotalRatings"=>["2"], "AverageRating"=>["1.5"],
 "LastReviewDate"=>["1161318436"]}], "BusinessUrl"=>[{}],
"Address"=>["3950 Grady Dr"]}

Here are a few optimisation tips I’ve cobbled together. With all performance fixes there is a trade-off between getting your site to load quick and making it maintainable. Also, remember not to optimise too early, make sure you know your site works and that you are improving actual bottlenecks rather than wasting time.

Page Rendering

1. Ensure that any JS that can be executed after the main page content has loaded is in the footer of the page. This will include Analytics JS and any AJAX requests.
2. If you’re AJAX request is less than 2k, use GET, it’s quicker. Try cache AJAX responses where possible.
3. Don’t scale images in HTML, if an image is going to be displayed 100px wide, save it as 100px wide

Optimising Assets

1. Use an External CDN i.e. when using scripts that are available from other sites (e.g. Yahoo libraries), refer to them directly rather than storing them locally on your server. This means that any users who have visited sites that use the same scripts will already have them cached in their browser.
2. When releasing JS and CSS to prod ensure that it is minimised (i.e. remove whitespace, comments etc.) using tools such as http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/compressor/
3. Optimise graphics for web (In Photoshop, Save for Web)
4. Use CSS sprites i.e. combining multiple images in to one graphic, and then cropping that one image in multiple areas (explained in point 1 here: http://www.leemunroe.com/optimise-website/). Reduces # of HTTP requests, one image instead of many.
5. If you have multiple local css or javascript files, consolidate them in to one large CSS and JS file. This cuts down on HTTP requests which introduce unnecessary overhead. You can do it quickly in rails using:
6. Gzip components (http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2007/07/high_performanc_3.html)

Caching

1. Try and cache in memory rather than in the file system. This will work if you have a server with plenty of RAM. I was on a training course once where the bloke claimed that if accessing RAM takes 1 second (obvisouly in reality it is much less) then accessing the equivalent data on disk would take 3 months.
2. iPhone tip: keep components under 25k otherwise they will not be cached on iPhones

Database Access

1. Use indexes based on the where clause of common queries on each table

Rails Specific

1. Use Timed Fragment Caching to simplify caching a page fragement for particular time periods e.g. 1.hour.from.now (rather event-driven expiration e.g. when a new post is added, when a user signs in) – http://www.ruzee.com/blog/2008/07/timed_fragment_cache-on-rails-21
2. Cache models using acts_as_cached (http://errtheblog.com/post/27)
3. A couple of Ruby tips for good measure: Always use regular expressions over expensive loops. It’s often possible to remove some slow loops all together by restructuring code.
4. Avoid dynamic finders like SomeModel.find_by_*, use SomeModel.find_by_sql to query directly instead
5. Question the use of helpers i.e. do you really need a form helper for a static form or can you make do with the pain of writing the html once?
6. Use eager loading for models with has_many relationships (http://railscasts.com/episodes/22-eager-loading)
7. Automatic asset minimisation – http://davetroy.blogspot.com/2007/12/automatic-asset-minimization-and.html
8. Use Rails’ excellent Page/Action/SQL caching helpers http://guides.rubyonrails.org/caching_with_rails.html

Use Yslow to identify bottlenecks

1. Use firefox add-on Yslow (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5369)
2. It requires Firebug, which if you don’t already have it, is a good tool to have anyway (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843)

Do you have any more? Feedback welcome.

A lot, at the moment. I’ve just returned from two weeks in Switzerland with inspiration and ideas. Think I’m going to take this blog in a new direction, I’m going to cut-down work on wherecaniski.com and will be focusing on other projects. I’ve started work with a good friend of mine on an iPhone app that we hope to have out relatively soon. I need to practice my French more. I’m learning the piano. More updates on everything when I get chance this Easter Weekend. Keep it real x

Earlier today I mentioned I was going to give wherecaniski.com an facelift, well, it’s now complete and online. 3 hours on layout and look and feel, and an extra couple hours on some other bugs and improvements. Head over and enjoy!

A few posts ago I mentioned Damien Hirst’s spot paintings, in this post I’m going to talk briefly about one of my favourite Hirst pieces, Infinity (2001). This is going to be brief, but I’m going to comment on the relationship between Infinity and the spot paintings.

I know that Hirst said “I imagine the spot paintings are what my art looks like under the microscope”, I know what he means, I think a load of ball bearings is what my blog looks like under the same microscope. Medication also make a frequent appearance in Hirst’s work, in fact, some of the spot paintings are even named after drugs.

Infinity, 2001 - Damien Hirst

With Inifinity, I think Hirst is commenting on the abstract nature of emotion and of colour – that they both exist, but share an unattainable quality. As humans,  the purest form of any colour or emotion appear to be unavailable to us. Indeed, they may not even exist. And if they did, how would we know anyway? All we can do is synthesize the experience with paint and pills. These pills, they all have an aim, they all attempt to induce an emotion or experience, but they aren’t perfect and they don’t last forever. Whether they reduce pain or stimulate the brain, they can only do so much before damaging the body.

There is only purity in the abstract, and the abstract, by definition, can only ever be represented our incomplete rendering of it. 

I think that’s one of the themes.

This post is so 2007, but… you know when you buy a new phone or walkie talkie and its novel to try them out in the same room or in the room next door? And then you realise that’s not only a waste of time but also quite boring. That’s like flash mobbing. Use your social networks properly! Don’t organize pointless meet-ups in public places with silly miming!

Listen. Facebook knows a lot more about UI design that you do. We’ve already had a round of moaning once before, and now what? “We like the homepage as it is”, well if we took that approach with everything we’d still be using ICQ for social networking.

I’m not including good quality critique in this, for example, the side bar could be clearer, and there’s not much differentiation between the boxes on this panel. They’ve obviously gone for the Twitter real-time feel, but I think Facebook is more about what pictures than anything else. Did you know that there are over 10 billion photos on Facebook? Of topic, but the site displays up to 300,000 images a second, quite an engineering feat.

And remember, Facebook is free at the point of use, I don’t think it’s a bad deal to be honest. “Oh but they own my data”, whatever, what does that even mean? That they know your age/education/likes/dislikes? Other private companies own data with a comparable “value”: Amazon, Starbucks, TFL etc. but because you pay them you feel like it’s part of the transaction. Maybe this is a wider debate about targeted advertising. Or advertising in general. Another post, another post…

Not much news but a few things…

reallygoodtodolist.com – I’ve neglected this a bit but it was only ever meant to be a way for me to learn Rails. Anyway, thinking of tweaking it a bit this weekend. We’ll see.

wherecaniski.com – so this site is finally emerging out of the cesspit, sandbox, whatever the place where you have no pagerank is called. As a result, organic growth is up and it’s making me think more seriously about giving it a makeover. Trouble is, I have a couple of other projects I’m working on. Well, I’m considering giving it a 3-hour-makeover, big changes will be layout and colours.

blog – well, I think I’ve “found my style” recently, but now WordPress is blocked from work, which means those rare moments of inspiration are now often lost. Occasionally I get Saturday mornings, where I can sit down with with a white mocha, an open window and a dirty old macbook.

other projects – I have a couple of other projects but it’s too early for it to be worth revealing anything. Hopefully there’ll be more news in the coming weeks. Until then, I have the 3-hour-makeover to hammer at least.

An idea was put to me at a party last night: imagine that when you die, all your accumulated wealth went to the state, with a few caveats, for example, property is excluded and you must have reached a high enough age so that the next generation have reached middle-age. Crazy you might think, we already pay enough taxes in our lifetime on income, property, purchases, rent and so on.

But think about the effect this would have on the entire population. We can see all around us that our social evolution is far outpacing our biological evolution, due to technology, geographical mobility and longer life spans. The effect is that social factors such as wealth, occupation and looks, have replaced physical strength and hunting capability – the root of our ancestors’ mating credentials. Why is accumulating wealth important to us? Two reasons, firstly, it allows us to purchase food and material goods without the effort of creating/finding/manufacturing/hunting/processing/designing/distributing/maintaining them ourselves. Secondly, wealth can be transmitted between generations as it is inheritable. Ultimately, money makes money, so as subsequent generations accumulate it there is a forward feedback loop, where the richer get richer.

By breaking the ‘wealth cycle’, a sort of anti-Darwinian socialism would be created, so that “excessive” wealth (a subject concept, I know, but this is only a thought experiment) would be absorbed by the state and back in to initiatives such as education, public transport, health care – the effect would be lower social poverty and improved social mobility. For the very poorest, the loss of potential wealth inheritance would be compensated by these improved social conditions.

Of course, there are flaws in the idea, for example, we would lose the second incentive for accumlating wealth, hence there would be an adverse effect on career ambition, the market place and the inhuman but useful metric: “GDP”.

An interesting idea none the less.