thislab.com - Web development and design by Fred Wu.

Magento 1.0 is out.

Last time I checked (when it was 0.8 beta) I couldn’t install because my host doesn’t have pdo_mysql. Since then I requested pdo_mysql to be compiled and now is a great time to give it another spin. ;)

It should be very interesting because Magento is built on Zend Framework.

Total usage: 7 hours (1h WIFI, 10m calls, 30 SMSes, the rest were all video playback)
Standby time: 4 days and 18 hours
Remaining battery: 12%

I think this is quite impressive. :)

UPDATE @ 15th April 2008:

Battery ran out completely today, with the following usage data:

Total usage: 10 hours (1h WIFI, 30min calls, the rest were all video playback)
Standby time: 6 days

Impressive! :)

This is just a quick and dirty test, please take it with a grain of salt.

We all know that CodeIgniter is a very fast framework, but how about Kohana? Kohana is packed with more features, so does that mean it is slower? Let’s find out.

The following benchmarks are done on my local Macbook Pro machine (C2D 2.4GHz + 4GB), Leopard 10.5.2, MAMP without any code optimisers or caches.

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Wordpress 2.5 RC1 is released today. I thought I’d give it a spin, I like the idea of having an automated plugin upgrade system. :)

So far so good, things are pretty smooth. If you’re going to upgrade too, remember to backup all your files! I for instance have accidentally overwritten my theme files, so I had to take them from the backup.

About the new back-end: I don’t really like it. To be honest I prefer the old style any day. The new back-end lacks contrast (too bright actually), making things more difficult to recognise. Also, when posting, some of the options such as the categories are now down the bottom. Why? We do still have a sidebar, why not use it?

The new back-end also has some styling issues: e.g. on a wide screen, everything is squeezed to the left. I say bring back the fluid page width!

2.5 has some highlights though. We now finally have a asset management feature (file management and gallery), it is simple but still better than nothing. The automatic plugin upgrade feature works really well! Just remember to CHMOD your plugin directory (wp-content/plugins) to 777.

I haven’t fully experienced with this new installation yet, but I am not that impressed with it, mainly because the back-end is in my opinion worse than the old one in terms of user experience.

So I was really impressed with the release of iPhone SDK, I went ahead and ordered an iPhone from the US. Today I received the package, brand new sealed, it is the 16GB version.

Even though Apple is kind enough to provide an iPhone emulator for developers, I still think it’s a good idea to get a real one, play with it and be familiar with the user experience.

Hopefully a couple of months from now I am able to put together something useful. ;)

And alongside with the new release, they have revamped their website too.

The website looks better than before, but… oops… that happened when I tried to use the search box:

They have now included a quick start guide which is awesome. For some reason though, I still can’t find a change log on their website.

In my opinion the new website is still horrible to use, the home page is more confusing than ever (huh? why is the roadmap under ‘Give Back’?). I guess the designer didn’t read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. ;)

It feels very ‘Microsoft’y… fingers crossed…