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?

This is another call for help. In all my years of computing, browsing and generally keeping up with the times (or trying to), I’ve never – seriously, never – found a way of organizing and accessing my browser bookmarks that doesn’t quickly devolve into utter madness. Madness, I tell you.

I’ve tried the entry-level folder structuring, centralized solutions like Delicious and Google Bookmarks and am beginning down the path of a synchronized solution in Mozilla Weave (true, not a purely organizational metaphor, but synchronization will facilitate maintained organization). I’m also vaguely aware of new bookmarking features in Mozilla 3, but must confess my total ignorance of the details and to how to use those features effectively.

So to those of you out there who actually like how your bookmarks are organized, what the hell are you doing right that I’m doing so freakishly wrong?

So I’m in the process of modeling a few applications that will include a fairly rich set of APIs and I had some time to spend really thinking through how I want to design the authentication model. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that, well, I can’t decide. As a result, I thought I’d call on any collective wisdom I can gather and see what others are doing and, perhaps more importantly, why.

First, let me state that these applications are not DoD(Department of Defense)-grade applications. We need something stronger than security through obscurity and something (significantly) less than national security cryptography.

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Normally I try to post solutions here, but today I have a question and I’m hoping that someone else can provide a solution. For months now, I’ve had this rather intermittent problem with VMWare Fusion on my Mac. Maybe someone else has seen it too.

It seems that every once in a great while I do something (or my system does something) that locks up the keyboard in my WinXP virtual machine. I can type to my heart’s content and all I get for my trouble is an annoying series of clicks from the virtual machine telling me that it has no clue what I’m doing. I’ve tried restarting the virtual machine, logging off, suspending the machine, mucking about with the preferences and just about everything else with no luck.

About the only thing that has worked is to reboot the Mac itself. That, however, seems awfully ham-fisted and I find it particularly annoying that I’m rebooting my Mac just to satisfy some sort of whimsical dalliance of Windows. I’ve Googled my arse off, but haven’t found any solution (and only one relevant result) that works for me.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Update 5/28/2008: A colleague just pointed me to these links that, for me, indicated that it was the Last.fm client causing my problem. He also pointed me to this message in the Last.fm forums indicating that they know about it.