Last week, I had to back out a (quite big) patch from the to-be-published addons.mozilla.org trunk because while it worked on our developer instances, it behaved totally strange on the staging environment: When I saved a record using the newly added UI, the changes partly didn't show up in the database.

So we went ahead and delayed the release of the patch until we figured out what the problem was.

After a little digging around the internet today I found a hint suggesting to flush CakePHP's cached models/table descriptions from the app/tmp/cache/models directory every time a database change is applied -- which fixed the problem we encountered.

So, fellow CakePHP users, keep that in mind next time you alter your DB, and your life will be happier :).

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If I was to buy a scooter, it would be this one -- And no, Mozilla is not expanding into the scooter business ;)

This is a picture I took a long long time ago in Karlsruhe and just now stumbled across again.

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As we all know, September-born children are the best anyway (well, at least I did).

Sadly, they also seem to be among the most badly sighted ones:

Israeli researchers now found out that being born during the summer increases the risk of becoming near-sighted significantly:

Children born in June and July - the months with the most sunshine - are 25 percent more likely to become nearsighted (myopic) than those born in December or January, according to Israeli research just published in the on-line edition of the most prestigious eye medicine journal, Ophthalmology. (...) The more light a newborn is exposed to after birth, the more the eyeball lengthens, according to the study, causing images to be focused in the vitreous part inside the eye rather than on the retina at the back of the eye.

Well, at least now I have a clue where my glasses come from -- and I guess I am lucky not to be born during the really bright months, or I'd be a total mole.

(Link to the article, requires subscription)

Update: This got boingboinged. Thanks, Xeni!

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A teen from New Jersey unlocked the iPhone, so it can be used with non-US phone networks. Nice move.

The hack takes "about two hours and involves some soldering and skill with software" though, the guy says. So, if you don't want to brick your phone, maybe it's not such a good idea after all.

Also, I wonder how long it takes until the companies in question sue the bejesus out of that kid. Or, if they are smart, they just hire him. We'll see.

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Rumor has it, GMail's storage may some day soon be cranked up to 10 gigabyte.

That'd be sweet, for sure.

While I am really not (yet) in danger of hitting the limit (at the time of writing it's 2887 Megabytes), I still find myself deleting pictures etc. that I get by email if they are "too big" ever so often. Maybe I am too conservative there, but I still consider mails > 1 MB to be "big" and I tend to delete them if and when I can. It'd be nice if I had a reason to get more 21st-century-ish about it :)

I need to admit though, that GMail and most of its competitors are already beating accounts like my university email by far. I finally stopped using that one when I ran into its ridiculous 50 megabyte limit twice a month.

(via valleywag)

Update: It's Google's "Shared Storage" Program that made people's GMail storage amount increase. Sadly, they increased the impressive one dollar price for 6 Gigabytes to 20 dollars just shortly after the program was started.

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Lenovo, one of the world's biggest PC manufacturers, is to start selling laptops to business and consumers with Linux pre-installed on the machines.

Link to BBC story.

That's good news, I guess: In particular when you don't want or need an instance of MS Windows preinstalled on your machine, you can now finally avoid the "Microsoft Tax" that you currently have to pay no matter what, just to delete it off your box once it arrives. It may also give customers an idea of how many dollars they actually spend on Windows, because nowadays many still believe "Windows was for free, it came with my computer"...

Apparently, earlier this year Dell already announced it would start shipping Linux PCs also.

Way to go, Dell and Lenovo!

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Schweet, a new Foxkeh wallpaper is out. I like the color.

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Design Agency "Information Architects" from Tokyo has released a tube map of the Web (for the second time, even), connecting the allegedly "200 most successful sites on the web":

The map (large version here) seems to have shrunk Firefox's "station" a little, compared to the first version of the map released around new year's. I hardly even found it at first.

While I may not agree with all of the inclusions or connections (for example, I am unsure why the awfully overrated German weblog "Spreeblick" belongs on there) I think it's an interesting and fun map to look at (rather than an accurate illustration of the current structure of the web).

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OSCON 2007 starts next week in Portland, Oregon. Now, Nat Torkington on O'Reilly Radar encourages people to record presentations there and youtube them afterwards.

As I can't make it to Portland this year, I am very glad to hear that! I hope, a lot of the presentations will make it online for us to enjoy.

PS: If you don't have a camcorder, you may want to check if your digital camera can take videos (most do, actually). The quality will certainly be sufficient even so. (The only thing I am worried about it youtube's 100M upload restriction, which may not be enough depending on the length of a particular presentation.) Oh, and make sure you bring a tripod if you tend to get shaky holding a cam for too long ;)

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Pretty cool: The new Fiat 500.

Not cool: Having a "designed for MS Windows" logo next to the cigarette lighter.

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