OSX Crashes More Then Windows

There! I said it!

For the record, all my computer hardware, phones, and tablets have been Apple for years; but I primarily do programming in .NET which means I still need to use Windows.

I'm on my 3rd Macbook Pro since Sept of 2007 and over that time OSX has consistently crashed more then Windows XP and Windows 7. Up until April of this year, I was primarily booting directly into Windows using Bootcamp and only using OSX 5% of the time and even with 5% use it had more complete lock ups!

Since April I've started running OSX 100% of the time and run Windows 7 off the Bootcamp partition using Parallels.

Since making the switch to 100% of the time I'd estimate OSX does a Black Screen of Death on average 3-4 times per month. I had one waiting for me this morning after leaving the computer on over night.

People think I'm making this up, so I plan to start tweeting every time it crashes for a historical record.

Granted I have a ton of software loaded on OSX, I'm running Parallels, and I use a Diamond BVU195 USB Display Adapter for a second monitor, BUT other then Parallels these are all things I did on Windows as well so I feel it's a fair comparison.

I've had Windows get slow, or weird, or need a reboot. But I can't remember the last Blue Screen of Death I've had, I can usually kill enough process where I can shut down the OS gracefully. I can't say the same for OSX.

I don't plan on switching away from my current setup and I'll be installing Lion soon. I just want people to STFU about how stable OSX is versus Windows, because it's simply not true.

Crash Log

• 7/30/2011
• 8/17/2011 (Milestone: first crash of OSX Lion)
• 9/8/2011
• 9/19/2011
• 9/25/2011
• 9/30/2011
• 10/14/2011
• 11/3/2011
• 5/25/2012
• 6/22/2012
• 8/3/2012 (Milestone: first crash of OSX Mountain Lion)
• 8/9/2012
• 8/16/2012
• 8/17/2012
• 8/17/2012 (second time in one day, grrr)
• 8/20/2012
• 8/22/2012
• 10/14/2012
• 10/17/2012

Ruby Cheat Sheet for .NET Developers

....or anybody who sucks at OSX/Linux.

I've been learning Ruby on Rails over the last couple of months and when you've been programming on Windows with Visual Studio for as many years as I have it's a major learning curve to switch to programming Ruby on OSX or Linux. So I've created a cheat sheet to help me with all the little details I routinely have to look up.

Ruby on Rails Command Line

Preview Site:

rails server

Preview Site as Production:

rails s -e production

Test DB and be able to rollback changes:

rails console --sandbox

Reset DB:

rake db:reset

Modify DB for real:

rails console

View ActiveRecord Raw SQL:

tail -f log/development.log

Migrate Development DB

rake db:migrate (DEV)

Migrate Test DB

rake db:test:prepare

Migrate Production DB

rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production

Create a New DB Migration:

rails generate migration [MIGRATION NAME] 

rails generate migration add_email_uniqueness_index

View Routes:

rake routes

Start Autotest:

autotest

Ruby on Rails 

Output debug info in Model:

logger.debug @user.attributes.inspect

Add Debug info to Layout:

<%= debug(params) if Rails.env.development? %>

Routes:

NAMED ROUTE            PATH
users_path             /users
user_path(@user)       /users/1
new_user_path          /users/new
edit_user_path(@user)  /users/1/edit
users_url              http://localhost:3000/users
user_url(@user)        http://localhost:3000/users/1
new_user_url           http://localhost:3000/users/new
edit_user_url(@user)   http://localhost:3000/users/1/edit

Routing Info:

http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2010/the-lowdown-on-routes-in-rails-3/

RESTFUL Routes:

GET      /photos           index     display a list of all photos
GET      /photos/new       new       return an HTML form for creating a new photo
POST     /photos           create    create a new photo
GET      /photos/:id       show      display a specific photo
GET      /photos/:id/edit  edit      return an HTML form for editing a photo
PUT      /photos/:id       update    update a specific photo
DELETE   /photos/:id       destroy   delete a specific photo

Ruby Syntax

Assign if variable is undefined:

||=  

@current_user ||= user_from_remember_token

Variable Scope:

$            A global variable
@            An instance variable
[a-z] or _   A local variable
[A-Z]        A constant
@@           A class variable

http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Ruby_Variable_Scope 

RVM

Upgrade to the latest version of rvm

rvm update --head

Install a version of Ruby

rvm install 1.9.2

Working with gemsets

rvm info                        # show the current environment
rvm 1.8.7                       # use the ruby to manage gemsets for
rvm gemset create project_name  # create a gemset
rvm gemset use project_name     # use a gemset in this ruby
rvm gemset list                 # list gemsets in this ruby
rvm gemset delete project_name  # delete a gemset
rvm 1.9.1@other_project_name    # use another ruby and gemset

Default for Project:

echo "rvm 1.9.1@MyProject" > ~/projects/MyProject/.rvmrc

Ruby Gems

Add gem to Gemfile

Run:

bundle install

or 

bundle update

or (for self contained)

bundle pack

Unix Command Line

Extract tar.gz:

tar -zxvf yourfile.tar.gz

Find a file:

find . -name "controller.rb" 

http://helpdesk.ua.edu/unix/tipsheet/tipv1n10.html

Delete Folder:

rm -rf

Add JPG File Extension to Multiple files:

for f in *; do mv "$f" "$f.jpg"; done

Git

Remove file from repo:

git rm --cached

GitHub

Checkout:

git clone git://github.com/crdeutsch/MVC3-Boilerplate.git

Publish:

git push origin master

Git Flow

Enable Git Flow

git flow init

Start a Feature

git flow feature start myfeature

Finish a Feature

git flow feature finish myfeature

Heroku

Create App:

heroku create

Publish:

git push heroku master

Migrate DB:

heroku rake db:migrate

View Logs:

heroku console
File.open('log/production.log', 'r').each_line { |line| puts line }

Compass

Compile CSS:

compass compile

Watch project for changes and compile whenever it does:

compass watch

StaticMatic

New site:

staticmatic setup my_site

Preview:

staticmatic preview my_site

Build:

staticmatic build my_site

OSX

Screen Capture:

Full Screen:

Hold down Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 3 and release all

Portion of your screen:

Hold down Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 4 and release all key

Application window:

Hold down Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 4 and release all key
Now, You will see the mouse cursor will change to +
Press the space bar once

This list is far from comprehensive, but it's pretty much everything I've had to google at least once to figure out and I plan to keep adding to it as I progress.

If you have some nuggets to share add them to the comments.

If lots of people want to contribute we should probably move this to a different format (Wiki, Markdown?) but until then I'll keep maintaining it here.