Performance

I recently had the need to find out how much time elapsed during the execution of just my action, so I created a handy little action filter based on System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch. This action filter adds the elapsed time to an HTTP header, appropriately named, X-Stopwatch. I choose to use a header instead of a response in the content body, so that it could be used both with non-HTML responses (binary, JSON, XML, etc) and HTML response. I was amazed at the usefulness of this simple piece of code, because it instantly gave me insight in to the actual execution time of my action to see if my optimizations were having any effect. It allowed me to monitor the execution time of code that I can specifically and easily control the performance of. ...

As I alluded in a post a couple of weeks ago, I have been a bad blogger. And I have neglected my community of readers. However I would like to tell you what I have been doing in the last couple of months while I have been neglecting my blog. I recently got involved in creating a startup as the lead developer for an online classifieds site called Anything For Sale By Owner. From the ground up this was conceived as a middle-ground between craigslist and ebay where every listing would be charged at a static rate of $1.00/month. The $1.00 is a way to week out the crap from craigslist and the death-by-fees from ebay. ...

Please note: These fixes break all current methods of bypassing driver singing requirements except the good old F8 during boot (that you have to do every single time you start vista) If you are using Rivatuner, atitool and or Peerguardian on 64bit vista, you will have to use F8 every single time to disable driver signing requirements to use those two programs. x86 version is unaffected. These updates should go official on the next patch Tuesday (in one weeks time). Please read more for the download links and information on these updates. ...

I found this great article about Con Kolivas on Slashdot today: Linux is burdened with ’enterprise crap’ that makes it run poorly on desktop PCs, says kernel developer Con Kolivas. Kolivas recently walked away from years of work on the kernel in despair. APCmag.com has a lengthy interview with Kolivas, who explains what he sees is wrong with Linux from a performance perspective and how Microsoft has succeeded in crushing innovation in personal computers. ...

One of the many techno-geek religious arguments that comes up a lot is which web server has a faster response time under load, IIS 6 or Apache? I am happy to say somebody actually put this to a test using what is known as the Digg-effect, basically a constant hammering of the server to keep it under load. The results may surprise some of the zealots out there and the test might be buried because of an unpopular fact. Here is the setup from the site: ...

David Cheong, a fellow software developer, has some very good tips for how to wake up early on his blog. I personally use half of them to get my self out of bed in the morning. The most important one that I use is: I’ve found this to be the single most important element in being an early riser. Days in which I did not crystallise the reasons for getting up were more likely to result in sleep ins. Now, I make it clear the night before what it is I want to wake up early for. Initially, I found writing things down to be helpful, but this isn’t always necessary, as long as it is clear what the reasons are. ...

Apple has just released a public beta of its Safari browser for Windows yesterday. And there have been already 6 zero day exploits and many, many crashes for the browser. You can read about them here here here and here. Which makes the following image from the Apple website, borrowed from aviv.raffon.net, all the more funny. ...

Many developers use a pattern called ORM or Object Relation Mapping to generate data layers for their application. Many other developers choose to create their own data layers by hand. I have done both and I don’t have a preference of one over the other. With an ORM generator you have an easy to maintain data layer for your applications, when you create one by hand you have much more control of the data layer as far as object creation goes. ...

This question comes up a lot when my friends and co-workers are arguing over the merits of Windows Vista. They say, “My {insert some Linux distro here} only uses {insert another useless amount of RAM here} RAM, why is Vista such a hog?” I usually go on to explain to them about SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, and all the advances and better memory management that went in to these two technologies. All information that is freely available from Part 1 and Part 2 of the Inside the Windows Vista Kernel articles. ...