Monthly Archives: August 2009

Snow Leopard Is Considered Fast?

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I was reading the New York Time’s technology section this morning on my iPod Touch (ironically) and ran across something I found quite humorous in an article about Apple’s latest version of their operating system, Snow Leopard:

In any case, Snow Leopard truly is an optimized version of Leopard. It starts up faster (72 seconds on a MacBook Air, versus 100 seconds in Leopard).

72 seconds? Really? I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but I find that very slow. I realize that is on a laptop so the CPU probably isn’t great, but comon.

For comparison, I just did a cold boot of my computer and timed it with my iPod’s stopwatch app. It’s specs are nothing amazing (it’s over 18 months old) and I’m running Windows 7 RC1 (build 7100).

  • 0 sec — power button is pressed
  • 10 sec — BIOS screen pops up
  • 25 sec — Windows logo appears (i.e. Windows starts loading)
  • 50 sec — login screen appears (25 seconds after Windows started loading)

After I typed in my password, it only took about 5 seconds (10 max) for my desktop, start bar, start menu, etc. to show up. That’s nearly 15 seconds faster than Leopard, 40 seconds faster if you ignore the 25 seconds that it took my computer to run through it’s pre-OS checks.

I admit it took another 30 seconds or so before everything else was loaded, but in Windows 7’s defense I have about two dozen programs set to auto-start (IRC, BitTorrent, twhirl, etc. etc.). When the install was fresh, it loaded the desktop in an instant.

Or is my reverse Apple fanboism clouding my judgment?

WordPress Trick: How To Show Hidden Custom Fields

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Often when I’m developing some WordPress code, I need to be able to debug by being able to see hidden custom fields (any custom field with an ID that’s prefixed with an underscore won’t show up on the edit screen). In order to do so, I use this little bit of code:

[php]add_action( ‘admin_head’, ‘showhiddencustomfields’ );

function showhiddencustomfields() {
echo "<style type=’text/css’>#postcustom .hidden { display: table-row; }</style>\n";
}[/php]

You can drop it into a new plugin or if you’re lazy, your theme’s functions.php file.

v007.me

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Due to the tr.im scare, the increasing trend of site-specific shortening services such as WordPress.com’s WP.me, and the awesomeness that is YOURLS, I’ve decided to join in and purchase my own short little domain name. I went the same route as WordPress.com did with a “.me” domain and ended up with “v007.me”.

It’s powered by YOURLS which is written by the well known WordPress plugin developers Lester “GamerZ” Chan and Ozh. It even comes with a WordPress plugin that can automatically create shortlinks for your new posts and even post it Twitter (I had been using Twitter Tools previously).

For example, here’s the short URL to this post: http://v007.me/1

Cool, huh? 🙂