I love Quicksilver. I don’t even use more than a third of its capabilities and I still couldn’t do without it. As nothing more than an application launcher, it’s completely indispensable to me. Because of it, I’m able to autohide my dock and, quite honestly, never see it. I don’t keep a single application icon on it (save those that are running, of course).

For the last few weeks, though, I’ve been noticing that Quicksilver has been absolutely monopolizing my CPU cycles to the tune of 65%-95% according to Activity Monitor. I don’t know when this started and I don’t recall any kind of “precipitating event” in the recent past that even might be the cause. If I only saw this kind of monopolization when it was reindexing, it would make some sense. That’s not the case, though. Usually, Quicksilver’s Task Viewer indicates nothing happening at all. The only thing I know for certain is that the application seems to have gone rogue on me. It’s out of control.

I thought I’d found a solution on Mac OS X Hints, but…no. And, by the way, if anyone else cares to try that hint, note that the Quicksilver caches are located in ~/Library/Quicksilver, not in /Library/Quicksilver as the hint indicates (the comments point this out as well). Deleting the specified directory (and a few others) briefly offered hope only to snuff it out. Cruel.

I don’t appear to be the only one seeing this, but it’s not something I’ve heard much rumbling about nor have I found a working solution. Has anyone else seen this and maybe dug up any kind of explanation, fix or workaround?

I’m starting to get my hands dirty with CakePHP and as I’m getting started, I find myself pondering the use of source control. Not whether to use source control, mind you (because, well, duh), but how to use it optimally in the context of a framework or even a product that can be extended with custom code. Ideally, I’d like to version any and all code that I write or modify, but none of the framework code that is left unmodified. I’m not sure that I’ve ever spent much time on that question. As best I can remember, I’ve always just committed everything.

I’m wondering what strategies others employ with respect to source control when custom code is mixed with product or framework code. Are there any best practices?

Am I the only one who thinks that the Packers are doing the right thing with this? I’m a sports junkie and listen to all of the chatter, but I haven’t heard many editorials that come out strongly in favor of the Packers. I’m not a member of Packer Nation, but I have all the respect in the world for Brett Favre, what he’s done in his life, his career, what he’s done for the Packers and for football. That said, this is starting to feel like that (girl|boy)friend that everyone’s had who can’t stand to be with you, but doesn’t want to be away from you.

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Or, On the Lack of Changes Made to This Site.

It’s been a long time since I’ve made any changes to this site. The reasons for that are many and most of them are personal: lethargy, (lack of) motivation, interest, etc. One reason, arguably the most compelling reason, though, was that Chryp – my platform of choice – was undergoing a major overhaul to its architecture. I liked what I was hearing about what the new version would offer, so I decided to hold out on investing any significant time on my existing site.

Chyrp 2.0 has been out in beta for a few weeks and today I took the plunge; I upgraded my dev site and I think I’m going to be glad I waited. Everything of any substance in the platform seems to have changed and neither my modules nor my custom theme will work as-is – a decision I applaud, by the way. I’m all for breaking backwards compatibility in the interest of bettering the software.

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This morning I was reading the second article in Smashing Magazine’s series on Web Form Design Patterns and I was surprised to read that the author(s) believe that “[…]it makes more sense to use a clear visual distinction between primary action buttons and secondary action buttons and introduce a significant amount of space to clearly separate them.” What makes sense to them feels counter-intuitive to me.

In my experience, “a clear visual distinction” usually takes the form of the primary buttons being dominant and the secondary being more, and usually too, subtle. It seems like the recent trend is to render the primary action buttons as, well, buttons and the secondary action buttons as text. I can’t be precise about how often I’ve accidentally clicked the dominant button (for no other reason than because it’s just so…dominant) when I meant to click the other, but suffice to say that it’s a big number. One day I almost spent an extra $100 for up to 2” of extra legroom while checking in for a flight online simply because of the “primary button” issue.

What? You think the airline planned that? How cynical of you.

Anyway, that’s been my experience. I can’t imagine I’m alone in that. I’d argue that if a distinction is considered necessary then care should be taken to ensure that the distinction itself is subtle. Making the primary action buttons significantly larger or “hiding” the secondary action buttons is very much the opposite of subtle.