February 2012
1 post
4 tags
Size Matters
Want the TL;DR version? Here you go: I don’t want a bigger cell phone. If I can serve breakfast in bed on it, it’s too damn large. If it won’t fit in my pocket or I can’t bend my leg when I put it there, it’s too damn large. If anyone feels compelled to ask whether I’m happy to see them because my phone’s in my pocket, it’s too damn large.
You...
January 2012
1 post
5 tags
Control Pulsar with Alfred
Wherein you:
Are a Sirius subscriber, and
Listen to Sirius on your Mac via Rogue Amoeba’s awesome Pulsar application, and
Heart the hell out of the productivity provided by Alfred, and
Have the Alfred Powerpack installed, then
You might be wishing you could use Alfred to control Pulsar so you didn’t have to activate the app every time you wanted to pause a great song by...
October 2011
2 posts
Terrell Owens' workout attracts zero NFL teams →
All dressed up and nobody showed.
If you’re a good guy, you just have to be better than a few of the other guys and someone can take a chance. If you’re not, you have to be better than a few other guys and better than your own personality.
Maybe teams have finally decided that TO can no longer outrun his own baggage.
Anonymous asked: This Auditable Behavior sounds great! But the links are dead.. is the code still available? /post/867819035/an-auditable-behavior-for-cakephp
4 tags
Solve Gmail's Disappearing Cursor in Safari →
This has been annoying me for the longest time.
Gmail uses Flash to provide “advanced attachment features,” the capability to attach multiple files at once and to display progress bars while attachments upload. As far as I know, that’s the only place Gmail relies on Flash, and if you switch to Basic Attachment Features in Gmail’s Settings, that eliminates Gmail’s...
4 tags
4 tags
Licensing State of the Union →
Nick Paulson (in a guest post to Mike Rundle’s blog, Flyosity):
Most pirates had no intention of purchasing your application in the first place. Donʼt hurt your real customers. If your application is good enough, people will buy it. The best way to prevent piracy?
Make great apps.
Nick gets it. It’s only natural to want to protect your work, but nothing—not our cars,...
September 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Compass, SASS, CakePHP
I’ve learned to loathe CSS. As a developer with a lot of OOP experience, I love the intent, but I can’t endorse the implementation. Then, about a year ago, I found Compass and my grey skies became blue again or, at the very least, they became a whole lot less grey.
The point of this post isn’t to dive deep into either my hostility towards CSS, my newlywed love affair with...
4 tags
Exchange "remote wipe" is a terrible, terrible bug →
coderspiel:
Those sons of bitches.
The day after I left AOL, I woke up to find my Blackberry restored to factory defaults. No warning, no exit interview heads up, no courtesy notification, no dinner, soft music, candlelight or lubrication. Lesson learned.
I’m a pretty accessible guy. I don’t stop answering the phone or email at 5pm. I don’t mind being so available...
August 2010
10 posts
3 tags
OS X Starter Kit (Plugins)
In case this is your gateway into this series, the context is this: I often explain my (relatively recent) preference for Macs with the statement that they occupy something of a sweet spot for me. Because the operating system is Unix-based, development environments are a snap and stability is baked right in. I also get a powerful command line environment. Because it’s Apple, I get some swell...
1 tag
RIP, Bobby Thompson
When I was a kid, probably 10 years old or so, I had a babysitter. I don’t remember her name. She had some kind of personal connection to Bobby Thompson. I don’t remember the nature of that connection. One day she asked whether I knew who he was.
The shot heard ‘round the world
I don’t remember how I knew that.
Such was the impact of the shot heard ‘round the...
3 tags
OS X Starter Kit (Preference Panes)
I often explain my (relatively recent) preference for Macs with the statement that they occupy something of a sweet spot for me. Because the operating system is Unix-based, development environments are a snap and stability is baked right in. I also get a powerful command line environment. Because it’s Apple, I get some swell eye candy (hardware and software) and all of the...
2 tags
Code Nomenclature
It’s hard enough to be the new guy on a project of any size so I think it’s important, even critical, that engineers and developers consider the learning curve during the development lifecycle. One easy win is to be conscious of entity nomenclature. All of the usual standards about length, self-documentation, etc. still apply, but I’m going to add one more standard to the...
2 tags
Grammar Snobbery →
I always used “i.e.” and “e.g.” somewhat interchangeably without rhyme or reason until an old platoon sergeant of mine set me straight. He shared this mnemonic device with me:
Use “i.e.” when you mean “I Explain”. Use “e.g.” when you mean “Example Given”
Thanks, SFC Allard.
3 tags
OS X Starter Kit (Applications)
I often explain my (relatively recent) preference for Macs with the statement that they occupy something of a sweet spot for me. Because the operating system is Unix-based, development environments are a snap and stability is baked right in. I also get a powerful command line environment. Because it’s Apple, I get some swell eye candy (hardware and software) and all of the...
3 tags
OS X Starter Kit (Configuration)
In the last year I’ve helped migrate a couple of family members to Macs, advised (to one degree or another) several peers & colleagues on their own switch and built (or rebuilt) several for myself. In that time, I’ve come up with something of a starter kit I consider essential and indispensable. These range from configuration settings to utilities to applications and from minutia...
5 tags
My Advice to Mac Notebook Users
Put your mouse away.
The fact that it sounds dirty is just an added bonus, but I’m being serious. I’m talking to you switchers, in particular (and welcome, by the way). Now put the mouse away. I know that you have pre-conceived notions about the usability and usefulness of the trackpad, but this ain’t your PC’s trackpad. I think you’ll be surprised.
Look,...
2 tags
Too Smart for Git →
The problem isn’t that Git is to [sic] hard, it’s that smart developers are impatient and have exactly zero tolerance for unexpected behavior in their tools.
Mea-freaking-culpa.
4 tags
Git Merge vs. Rebase →
Easily the most clear and concise explanation of a difficult concept that I’ve ever read.
The bottom line: Merge upstream, rebase downstream.
July 2010
8 posts
5 tags
An Auditable Behavior for CakePHP
In an effort to clean house, so to speak, before moving on to new project ideas, I finally “certified” an Auditable behavior for CakePHP that I started writing over a year ago. Actually, I’ve written it several times, for several projects, and finally got around to packaging it up with documentation and all the trappings.
Audit logs for tracking changes are nothing new, of...
4 tags
FlickrPlus Changes
I spent a good bit of time this weekend making changes to my FlickrPlus extension for Safari. Most of the changes are under the hood, but one in particular is not.
I’d never been happy with how I was displaying Exif data. I built and released that functionality quickly with the intent of iterating on the visual bits, but it’s hard to iterate when you can’t decide how to...
3 tags
5 tags
Add to Google Reader Changes
One of the things that I really wanted to do with my Add to Google extension for Safari was to offer the option of subscribing via iGoogle. I didn’t expect it to be a popular option and, as far as I know, it’s not. It was, however, educational to implement and I like to think it offered some kind value-add, even if it wasn’t widely used. That said, it’s going away...
3 tags
4 tags
Safari Extension: FlickrPlus
As a photography hobbyist—I hate to even use the term amateur at this point—and avid user of Flickr for sharing my photos, I spend more than a little time looking at, being inspired by and trying to learn from some of the amazingly talented photographers that also share their work there.
As much as I love the site for what it does and even its general user experience, There are...
5 tags
Safari Extension: Add Google Reader
I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but given all the movement around these here parts, I thought I’d double down. You know, just in case you were sitting home on a Friday night pondering the native capabilities of your Safari browser and thinking to yourself…
Self, this browser would be just about perfect if I could only click that RSS button up there in the address bar and...
1 tag
Lesson Learned
I know we’re never supposed to say “never”, but I can’t imagine ever hosting my own blogging engine or platform again. I’m a low maintenance kind of guy. I like to tinker endlessly, but I prefer to tinker with many things, not with one thing. I’m also a simple kind of guy. I don’t need to do much with my blogging engine—just write a little prose,...