It’s almost time for Richmond Code Camp 2010! Once again it looks like a pretty awesome mix of topics. If you’re in the Richmond area and feeling the need to release your inner nerd this is a great place to be. It is free to attend and they will probably serve free breakfast and lunch.
[Visit RCC]
[View Sessions]
[Register]
[Get Directions]
My mom passed on this awesome chocolate chip cookie recipe over the weekend. It comes from a box of Crisco “All-Vegetable Shortening Sticks” (whatever that is) and apparently it isn’t printed anymore.
Hope you enjoy, and feel free to share your own recipes for chocolate chip cookies in the comments!
Makes about 3 dozen cookies.
* If nuts are omitted, add add an additional 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
How to substitute Crisco for butter or margarine in your favorite recipes:
1 cup Crisco + 6 teaspoons water = 1 cup butter or margarine
I’m testing a new plugin called WordTwit. It’s supposed to post a new tweet every time I publish something here.
I love my Mac. In fact, I love just about everything about it. The places where it fails to please tend to be when handling input devices – specifically keyboard and mouse input.
The default acceleration curve for mouse motion is bizarre. There are two speeds – slow and relativistic. That was fixed on day one thanks to USB Overdrive. While it does cost $20, it is well worth it for the ability to use an external mouse.
The keyboard bindings took a while to become irritating, probably because as a laptop user some degree of keyboard discomfort is to be expected. The confined space means that come concessions must be made; keys are squished or missing, some are given dual roles, and some are out of place. As a programmer, I do a lot of navigation on the keyboard. Unless I’m moving between large chunks of code, I don’t touch the mouse at all. Because of this, I use a full size USB keyboard to give me access to all of those nifty keys that are missing on the laptop (Home/End/Page Up/Page Down). Unfortunately OS X maps different functions to some of those keys than I’m used to. For instance, “Home” and “End” scroll to the top and bottom of the document instead of the beginning and end of the current line of text. Fortunately I’ve found a resolution.
User specific keyboard bindings are stored in /Users/{User Name}/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict. Note that this directory and file may not exist at first, so you may need to create it. If this is the case, you’ll also need to create the DefaultKeyBinding.dict file. I recommend copying the system wide keyboard bindings file from /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/StandardKeyBinding.dict. This will give you a good base to work from. I don’t recommend modifying this file directly, as if you mess something up you’re really screwed.
Now that you’ve copied the file, all you have to do is modify it to suite your fancy. It’s possible to do this by hand, but it’s easier to use a specialized editor. I recommend the KeyBindingsEditor (free download). Fire up KBE and look for the “Home” key (make sure the “Modifiers” field is clear), then change the action to moveToBeginningOfLine. Do the same for the “End” key, except the action will be moveToEndOfLine. Make any other modifications you want, save the file, and restart any running applications to obtain the new bindings.
Easy right? There are a few exceptions (imagine that). Some applications, such as Firefox and Eclipse, ignore these key bindings altogether. I’ve figured out how to fix Firefox, but I’m not an Eclipse user (give Netbeans another try, the new version is really nice). Fixing Firefox isn’t nearly as straightforward and can’t be done on a per user basis (all changes are global). In fact, this was reported as a bug back in 2003 and is still an open item.
First you need to obtain the platformHTMLBindings.xml file. This contains all of the keyboard bindings used by Firefox and its location depends on what version you’re running. For pre-1.05 users (are there any?), the file is in /Applications/Firefox.app/contents/MacOS/res/builtin/. For the rest of us it’s inside the /Applications/Firefox.app/contents/MacOS/chrome/toolkit.jar archive. A .jar archive is nothing more than a renamed .zip file, so you can extract its contents as you would any other .zip. Once you extract the contents, you’ll find the file in the content/global/ directory. After you modify it you will need to update toolkit.jar with the new version so don’t delete anything and be sure to back up the original.
Inside platformHTMLBindings.xml, you’ll need to find and modify the following nodes in the <handlers> section of <binding id="inputFields">, <binding id="textArea">, and <binding id="editor">:
<!-- Change cmd_scrollTop to cmd_beginLine --> <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_HOME" command="cmd_scrollTop"/> <!-- Change cmd_scrollBottom to cmd_endLine --> <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_END" command="cmd_scrollBottom"/>
You can find other commands at Customizing Mozilla.
After you’ve made your modifications zip the folder back up, change the extension to .jar, and copy it over the toolkit.jar archive.
Whew, OK that’s it. If you have any questions shoot me an e-mail at edwardsdl@gmail.com.
Last Friday my boss whipped up a program that would spam my phone with text messages. It was cute – until I had 350 unread text messages and my phone wouldn’t stop vibrating.
Over the weekend my thirst for vengeance overpowered me, and I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. I spent about 30 minutes writing an app that would not only spam his phone with text messages, but fill his e-mail inbox too. Oh yes, that would show him!
Like most developers though, I can’t just leave well enough alone. An e-mail loop is just too simple, features must be added, functions must be enhanced.
Address spoofing – check.
Randomized subject lines – check.
Randomized content – check.
Then things got out of hand. Harmless subjects gave way to “Free Viagra!” and “You’re fired!”. Messages became, “I think I’m pregnant”. Worst of all, spoofed addresses went from mutual friends to mutual bosses.
At the time I thought my hellish little spam app was brilliant. When Jaime called I expected him to concede victory, to beg me to stop killing his inbox. Nope, not even close.
“Hey dude, I think you have a virus. It’s sending e-mails to Barry.” Barry is our boss’, boss.
Wait, what? I didn’t code it to do that. It would look like it came from him, but it surely wouldn’t send it to him. How could this be? I checked my e-mail to see if I was getting anything. There it was, Mr. Mailer Daemon informing me that my message could not be delivered. Apparently Jaime had disabled incoming text messages coming from e-mail gateways, and AT&T cheerily notified the sender each time one of these messages failed to deliver. Oh, damn. The one feature I didn’t add was the one to route the reply address back to me. Actually, in hindsight, I think the one feature missing was common sense.
I never got my revenge. I did get a heavy dose of humiliation, but everyone needs that once in a while.
For anyone wanting to hang themselves, or perhaps simply to amuse themselves at my expense, I posted the code below.
My boss and I have decided to try our hand(s?) at a little freelance development. Neither of us have done this before, but it looks fun so we decided to have a go.
So far we’ve placed a bid on a pretty small project involving a wine database management and reporting software. It’s nothing too ambitious and I have no doubt we’d be able to handle this easily. Hopefully we’ll get the bid, though last I checked there were 17 others. Wish us luck!
Here we go again.
The DMCA has yet again been used in an attempt to squelch free speech and fair use, this time by Ralph Lauren. A post last month on Boing Boing featuring an advertisement in which a model had been photoshopped with bizarre proportions has drawn the ire of Ralph Lauren’s lawyers. Soon after posting the ad, Boing Boing ISP, Canada’s Priority Colo, received a DMCA takedown notice, apparently citing a copyright violation.
Either these guys haven’t heard of fair use or they’re so embarrassed they’ll do anything to cover up this blunder. Perhaps someone should introduce them to the Streisand Effect.
So, instead of responding to their legal threat by suppressing our criticism of their marketing images, we’re gonna mock them. Hence this post.
You can read the original article here.
Below I’ve posted an e-mail I sent to Tom Adams (the CEO of Rosetta Stone) a few weeks ago regarding my very disappointing experiences with his product, namely the entire deactivation process they have implemented. He never responded, so I thought I’d post it here and see what others thought.
If you too want to let Mr. Adams know what you think, send him an e-mail at tadams@rosettastone.com. I’m sure he would be very happy to hear from you (don’t hold your breath)!
My buddy Steven over at the Mac Fam blog is getting hitched this weekend, so naturally we had a bachelor’s party to celebrate. I’ve learned a few things:
Congrats, Steve – I wish you the best.
My friend Grant (whose blog is linked at the bottom) has been working pretty hard developing a music review site he’s named, “The Last Seven Minutes.” It was a pretty ambitious goal for his first real web development project, but he’s managed to pull it off. Check it out at http://grantrose.org/reviews.php.
I've concluded that proggit isn't nerdy enough, and now read posts on StackOverflow for fun. I...I think I need help...
I made another nerd blog: http://runtimewithstevenmac.blogspot.com I needed a place to house my nerd rants. RT @God_Damn_Batman: Caught Robin lipsyncing to Glee instead of practicing his Krav Maga strikes. And Alfred wonders why they always die young.
