Rambled during January 2009

Anyone using dual or multi-monitors knows it isn’t always easy to find nice high resolution background. Often we need to resort to creating our own or altering one we’ve found but isn’t quite ‘it’. The more monitors you add, the higher the resolution of your desktop becomes, the harder it is to find really high res backgrounds that will run seamlessly across your array of screens. If you have found yourself in the same situation then be sure to check out Panedia’s Desktop Wallpapers!

And while you’re at it, why not check out the Panedia website too.

If you’re reading this post you’re one of the first to see my site on the new host. DNS is currently propagating around the world and should be all done in the next 8 hours or so. If you’ve read my post on how Digg and Reddit have consistently caused Dreamhost to disable my site(s) you will no doubt understand why I’ve moved sites over to a new host. Moving to Media Temple feels like a breath of fresh air. Once the site had moved over the first thing I noticed was how much more responsive it was. It connects faster, responds faster, and pages load faster.

Update: Not a moment too soon! About 3 hours after most of the DNS servers started pointing to the new location a new wave of visitors came along to check out the Home Office Setup. I’ve been monitoring the server for the past 3 hours to see how it holds up. And it holds up just fine! Much better than Dreamhost, where with traffic like this it would render the site almost unreachable, would time out, or would simply crash. The first 3 log parts (per hour) from the server are 21MB, 26MB, and 27MB respectively. A closer look at the performance over the past 3 hours show close to 8000 visitors/sessions and 300.000 hits. And all throughout this the server remained very responsive and behaving perfectly.

Nearly 8000 visitors in the first three hours. No site slowness or messages from the host!

The first four hours. Averaging 100.000 hits per hour just fine.

5 hours, over half a million hits, still doing fine. Dreamhost eat your heart out!

6 hours, over 15K visitors, 600K hits, nearing 25GB bandwidth, still going strong.

Over the past year I’ve received quite a few questions from people wondering how I manage all the windows that must be all over the place on all the various screens and systems. The standard answer is that “I’ve got my own little tool that I developed for managing window layouts” (on single as well as multiple systems simultaneously). However, that standard answer seems to result in even more questions as to how it works and what it does. Since I’m a firm proponent of code re-usability I’m also a firm believer in not wasting too much time answering the same questions over and over again so I’ve decided to answer the question in detail, once and for all.

What I’m using for my windows and layout management is the Window Layout Manager, or WiLMA for short (hey, as developers we’re allowed to invent a dozen new acronyms each day and we like that little perk!). For all the details you can visit the Window Layout Manager page I’ve added to the site or just click the image below if you want a larger click target.