Categories take a little getting used to. Objective-C categories let you add your own functionality to existing classes. This can take classes in directions that seem decidedly strange. For example, if you want to draw a string in UIKit, you ask the string to draw itself. Coming from a Windows / Java background this seems […]
A quick QuickTime tip I just discovered.
I’m sitting in the car at the Canada/US border, blogging into my phone, using Siri. There’s a 30 to 60 minute delay in crossing the border, so I have some time to play. So far I’ve dictated this entire post to Siri, without having to correct anything. Cool.
I had a Plantronics Voyager Pro+ headset that I rather liked. But I lost it. :( So when I went shopping for a replacement, I decided to see what else was out there. I tried out two other headsets, the Jawbone ERA and Jawbone ICON, but in the end, returned them. I mostly use a […]
When developing an AIR app, it’s common to want to start it clean, as if there were a new user launching the app for the first time. Flash Builder even supports this, with a checkbox in the Debug Configuration dialog for “Clear application data on each launch”. This clears out the local storage for the […]
This is a fairly simple program that was intended to be the start of something bigger. In it’s current form, it’s an Insteon PLM (PowerLineModem) protocol client that uses a TCP connection to an Insteon SmartLinc (2412N) device to send commands over the power line / wireless mesh to an Insteon iMeter Solo (2423A1), to […]
I was hand-editing some JSON today in BBEdit, and wanted to keep it valid and nicely formatted. Copying the text and pasting it into jsonlint.com is no fun, so I went looking for a solution. I found this post on a creating a Python script and dropping it into the right place to get JSON […]
I haven’t reviewed a non-tech product in a while, but I’ve been introduced to a new appliance that I think is worth mentioning. I bought a water boiler. It all started with “I should drink more tea”. Why don’t I drink more tea? Because I’m impatient and I don’t like hanging around waiting for the […]
There’s a saying, “Security is a process, not a product”. But companies don’t ship processes, they ship products. Now, when you buy some products, you’re also buying the process. If you’re running Windows, Mac OS, iOS, the Xbox 360, or a PS3 (to cite a few examples), then assuming your device is online and keeping […]
I was working on a spec in a wiki based editor yesterday and I noticed how uncomfortable I was working on this document in a browser. This is a long, fairly important document I was working on, and I was working on it in a tool designed for easy skipping from page to page, deigned […]