Journey's End

How to Tell if You Will Like Sucker Punch

Can you relate to the following image? If so, then yes.

Cheers,
Steve

Broken OS X Installers and How to Fix Them

The installers Ralink provides for some of their chipsets, like the RT2770 does something retarded: they attempt to unload a kext in a pre-install script, and when it fails the script fails and the entire install fails.

This means on a new machine, or one that never had the kext …

Endianess, Thy art Sneaky

I took delivery of my Linksys WUSB600N V2 today and was very excited to get my G4 Mac Mini online. The many online sources suggests all I need to do is change a few values in an Info.plist. However as it turns out, that wasn't enough. In order for …

Tabbing in Vim With Tab Autocompletion

I use vim with a tab autocompletion macro, and sometimes I really do want to insert a tab character and autocompletion gets in the way.

Today I found out that if I hold down shift and hit tab, a tab is inserted and tab autocompletion doesn't get triggered. Prior to …

iOS Toolbar Pagecurl Icon

iOS 4.x's page curl UIBarButtonItem comes in blue, and blue, and blue. If you set a UIToolbar's tintColor, then it disappears for some reason.

So I had to make a replacement. Since I use a lot of icons made and given away by awesome people, I feel it is …

iPhone 4 layer export script for Gimp

I often mockup iPhone interfaces on the Gimp, then exporting each layer for use as backgrounds. For iOS 4 each image needs to be exported twice: one at full resolution with @2x in its filename, and once at half-resolution without the @2x. e.g. nav_bg@2x.png and nav_bg.png …

Socket.IO Framing Protocol

Socket.IO is a great library and framework that doesn't seem to have a good description of the protocol available. In interest of helping others when they google "socket.io framing protocol", this post was born.

The description of the framing protocol used by Socket.IO below is taken from …

UIGraphicsBeginImageContext on iPhone 4

I generate UIImages in some of my iOS applications, and prior to the iPhone 4 they all worked fine. With the introduction of the iPhone 4 and Retina Display, I realised my generated images were blurry even though I am rendering them at twice the resolution.

It turns out this …

Pulse-o-matic now on App Store

It took a month and a bit, but Pulse-o-matic is finally on the App Store. For my loyal followers (all 3 of you), email me for a promotion code :)

Cheers,
Steve

On Wikileaks and World Stability

Since the release of US embassy cables (aka #cablegate), many have accused wikileaks of being irresponsible on the argument that what is revealed will retard progress or even destablise world politics.

However, 15 days after the release of these cables, we have observed no breakdown in negotiations, no cooling of …

Thoughts on HTML, computer programs, and programming languages

I would like to start this post off by saying that emotionally I agree with the sentiment that HTML is not a programming language. Intellectually, however, my position is that HTML is a programming language.

My argument for HTML as a programming language is very abstract, and to put it …

Avoiding tag collisions

UIViews in UIKit has a tag property which is very handy for marking views then retrieving them later. I am always worried though I will use the same tag for views in the same view hierarchy

Cheers,
Steve

Script to read iPhone stack trace

Sometimes my iPhone apps would crash and all I would get is a stack trace even when I run in Debug mode. Using atos wou
Cheers,
Steve

Why Even Techies aren't Immune from the Filter

Of late I have seen statements from technologically inclined individuals along the lines of:

I am not worried about the filter. Even if they put it in it will just slow things down a bit but we all know how to get around it.

At first glance this seems reasonable …

Ben NanoNote First Impressions

Recently unboxed my Ben NanoNote, and I am impressed. The packaging was top-notch and classy as hell. I would not hesitate to put my name to it.

The NanoNote itself is tiny, and feels fairly solid despite the shiny-appearance which I have come to associate with cheapo devices. It's a …

Open Letter to Silicon Chip Australia

Dear Silicon Chip,

I recently cancelled my print subscription. You are no longer a magazine I wish to support.

Political commentary on topics like the insulation scheme and global warming has no place in an electronics magazine. The editor(s) are using the mailbag section to push their own agendas …

Script to make IPAs for ad-hoc distribution.

This script produces an IPA, then verifies to make sure the IPA is actually valid.

PRODUCT_NAME=""
IPA="\\({PRODUCT_NAME}.ipa" APP="\\).app"

if [ -z "\${PRODUCT_NAME}" ]; then
        echo "PRODUCT_NAME not set";
        exit 1;
fi

rm -rf ipa
mkdir -p ipa/Payload &&
cp -R build/Debug-iphoneos/\\({APP} ipa/Payload/ && pushd ipa && zip -q …

2010-06-09

PRODUCT_NAME=""
IPA="\\({PRODUCT_NAME}.ipa"</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">APP="\\).app"


if [ -z "\\({PRODUCT_NAME}" \]; then</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">        echo "PRODUCT_NAME not set";</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">        exit 1;</span> <span class="Apple-style-span …

Discouraging File Sharers at LANs

A friend of mine likes to go to LANs and like to run LANs. He has been complaining for sometime that social gaming no longer occur at LANs and in its place is leeching. Lest you think LANs have somehow turned into 19th century medical clinics, we are talking about …

Notes on PHD Guiding

• Maximum RA guide pulse is 1000ms (1s). If PHD is not locking on to the star and it says "dur=1000" in the status bar, a better polar alignment is required.
• RA hysteresis is used in a 2-term weighted moving average:

RA_dist = (1.0 - RA_hysteresis) * RA_dist + RA_hysteresis * last_guide

Cheers,
Steve …