A set of slides from a Flickr talk at Web 2.0 Expo called ‘Capacity planning for web operations‘.

I’ve had several hours to play with Inkscape 0.46 since it was released, and despite the minor version increment, a lot has changed.

New features

• A “fill” tool, making it trivial to turn bitmaps into vectors quickly
• 3d drawing shapes (including perspective)
• A tweaking tool, making it easy to nudge/blur/soften shapes
• Several new effects (including path effects)
• Many performance improvements, including huge improvements in blur speeds
• Better gradient tools
• Dockable tool windows (nicely done too)

I’m especially excited about the “fill” tool, as it simplifies tracing scanned sketches and logo bitmaps. The tool creates vectors using a flood-fill algorithm, based on the zoom level and configurable limits (fill method, threshold, gap-closing, etc.). In my tests so far, I’ve been able to turn pencil sketches into vectors quickly¹, as well as scans of real-world-objects.²

1. Normally tracing complex sketches takes me hours ↩
2. I created the fuji logo by scanning + fill-tracing an old, decaying T-Shirt logo ↩

Which is more important, actual or perceived performance? I especially liked the referenced data showing how people may perceive performance.

The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking state to the working state – John Ousterhout

Here’s a story about Programming as if Performance Mattered, which weaves a tale of optimization in Erlang.

Here are few articles about the physical structure of C++ projects (part one, part two). Years ago I read a disappointing text on the subject (light on the measurement, heavy on the dogma), but the second article in this set was quite good.

A story of tuning performance in Erlang, and how it’s not just language that matters to application performance. Decomposing aproblem intelligently is just as effective as coding it in a lower-level language.

Coding Horror: Everything Is Fast For Small n, a reminder to always, always measure.

Electronic Arts Standard Template Library discusses issues with the C++ STL related to game development, and EA’s libraries that improve on it. They have several good points about allocators (and performance), and std::string (related to consistency).

[stars: 3] The Pursuit of Happyness. A reasonable record of the Christopher Gardner story, staring Will Smith (and son). The cast’s performances were solid, but the movie moved awkwardly to its conclusion. I didn’t like the premise that riches are required for happiness, though the truth of the real life story is that a father’s love is enough to make any child happy.