I have been moonlighting as an iPhone Developer recently and I can truly say that you will probably spend more time fixing memory leaks in your code than programming for your App in XCode. I was working on a custom (RSS) feed reader and I was determined to keep the memory footprint to less than 30kb because it was a very simple App. I got stuck when I tried to release my feed data inside the NSData class in Cocoa. It crashed even though I tried different methods such as declaring NSURLConnection as an object. This object is probably the largest data stored in memory (can reach about 4MB) in my App because it contains the feed in XML (and not JSON), so it really needs to be released.... Click here to read more

Here’s a good tip: My 160 GB Seagate hard disk started to fail so I decided to try RAID 0 on my old Intel DG965WH motherboard. I purchased two 320 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD3200AAJS) drives. I mounted the drives on the system and installed Intel Matrix Storage drivers in Windows 7. I ran a benchmark on HDTach and was satisfied. I checked for a newer version of this driver but found nothing. After 2 months I learned that the new version of this driver is called Intel Rapid Storage. I was not expecting any performance boost at all but when I ran the benchmark again it showed a 28% increase on sustained rates! Check out the videos below (best viewed in 480p):... Click here to read more

I was recently browsing the web to check the price of my motherboard, when I found something surprising. I purchased my Intel DG965WHMKR motherboard for Php 6,500.00 back in May 2005, and as I was checking the prices I found out that the average price for this motherboard is currently and possibly for the year 2009 would be at Php 6,100.00 and that price is for outside the Philippines. How much more would that be if the board is to be purchased here it probably would cost at least Php 8,000.00. Anyway, here are some tips to picking a good board.... Click here to read more

Magic Jack, this amazing usb device will allow you to make unlimited calls to the US and Canda for $20.00 per year and better yet, you get a registered landline number that allows you to receive calls. I’ve found a lot of sites on how to set up routers, firewalls and access points to allow Magic Jack to pass through. None of them worked. It was agitating so I had to do some tests on my own. Read on for the complete port lists.... Click here to read more

Looks complicated doesn’t it? Nowadays home theater systems are getting cheaper and more affordable and I still can’t find a decent guide about installing, setting up and basics of these home theaters. Then I realized there are not a lot of good guides because there are hundreds of home theater variations and so I created this guide. This is a very basic guide for home theaters. It won’t deal with how DTS works or how HDMI works. I won’t bother with very technical details because technology changes but the basic fundamentals do not. This guide just tells you how to connect the devices, the two types of experience you get from a home theater and to understand what __ IN / __ OUT jacks are so that you can use the system without paying for the expensive installation cost.... Click here to read more