QPR scored two late goals… I lost my keys… but then something nice happened.
I’ll let Neil tell the story.
Tags: lost-and-found, qpr, keys, football
]]>I’ll let Neil tell the story.
Tags: lost-and-found, qpr, keys, football
]]>I’ve updated the Live Update widget slightly, to fix a bug which caused problems when the station being displayed doesn’t list the platform numbers.
I’m not sure quite why some stations don’t do this, but apparently they do!
]]>I’m not sure quite why some stations don’t do this, but apparently they do!
]]>I’ve been fiddling around with Dashcode, and have created my first widget.
It displays live train update information for the UK train network, of the sort that you get on the live indicator boards on the platforms.
Dashcode itself is quite cool, except for its utterly infuriating habit of completely destroying and recreating the entire directory structure of your project all the time, thus rendering it utterly incompatible with Subversion.
sigh.
]]>It displays live train update information for the UK train network, of the sort that you get on the live indicator boards on the platforms.
Dashcode itself is quite cool, except for its utterly infuriating habit of completely destroying and recreating the entire directory structure of your project all the time, thus rendering it utterly incompatible with Subversion.
sigh.
]]>The main problem is that Apple have already used the obvious gesture for selecting text - "click" and drag-select - to allow you to position the text cursor using a magnifying glass.
This is indeed a useful gesture... when you need it... which is less often than I need cut & paste. However, given that they are unlikely to change the purpose of that gesture, we're in need of another one.
The best I can think of, currently, is a two finger gesture where one finger remains static, whilst the other one drag selects. The static finger is almost like a depressed modifier key in this situation, and a similar use of it could be made in other contexts.
Currently the gesture I've described would be interpreted as the "pinch", but I think that's a mistake. I think that the interface should only recognise a pinch when both fingers are moving. This would allow the one-in-motion, one-static gesture to mean something else.
Once text selection is cracked, the rest is relatively simple I think - some sort of contextual interface or halo that presents itself around the selected text, given the normal cut/copy/paste type options.
There are still a few questions - like how do I paste in to an empty selection - but I think that they are easily solved. A paste button on the keyboard would do it.
]]>I’ve had my iPhone for a couple of weeks now, and I must say I love it.
It’s not perfect though, and I’ve got a fair few things that annoy or puzzle me, such as:
It’s not perfect though, and I’ve got a fair few things that annoy or puzzle me, such as:
It started tonight with throwing the ball away from opposition players, which is something that has been creeping in at QPR lately. This is not just childish, it is un-sporting (sorry, an old fashioned concept I know) and whether it comes from the players or the fans, it reflects badly on us all.
Then there's the treatment meted out to visiting greats. Tonight it was Andy Cole's turn. You may not like him (personally I do like him), but he's one of the highest scoring players in English footballing history, and there's no doubt that he deserves respect from any true fan of the game.
A bit of ironic banter along the lines of "who are you?" or "you're not famous anymore" is fine by me. But outright abuse, such as yelling "wankerl wanker" isn't just in poor taste, its downright dumb when directed at a player of his quality.
At that stage, we were 2-0 up and cruising. Then a few bright sparks decide to wind up Mr Cole. The result? A hatrick for him, and a 2-4 defeat for us that he orchestrated.
I used to be proud of the atmosphere and quick-fire wit at Loftus Road. Now I fear we're in danger of having it ruined by the kind of morons who think its funny to sing songs about people having aids.
Tags: qpr, football
If there was one thing I really wish that more of the programmers I'd worked with over the years had learnt, I think it would have to be the DRY principle, namely: "Don't Repeat Yourself"!
And if you haven't read The Pragmatic Programmer, go out and buy it now!
Tags: programming, dry
In it he says:
"so we’ve chosen people to balance that out but who understand that the primary aim of the company is to make the best innovative, creative entertainment possible. And if that means we’re a break-even company instead of a massively profitable company, then that’s where we’ll go.
We’re going to make the games that both gamers and us ourselves would want to play. If that makes us successful from a financial point of view then awesome, but we’re not going to do it the other way – target being profitable and see what kind of game we could make to do that."
]]>In it he says:
"so we’ve chosen people to balance that out but who understand that the primary aim of the company is to make the best innovative, creative entertainment possible. And if that means we’re a break-even company instead of a massively profitable company, then that’s where we’ll go.
We’re going to make the games that both gamers and us ourselves would want to play. If that makes us successful from a financial point of view then awesome, but we’re not going to do it the other way – target being profitable and see what kind of game we could make to do that."
Suffice to say that this spoke to me. I wonder if they've got any jobs going :)
Tags: bungie.games, development
]]>One nice little bonus with XCode 3.0 (new with Leopard) is the inclusion of the xed command to invoke the xcode editor from the command line. It’s nice to be able to open an XCode window to edit files, and it’s particularly handy to be able to set P4EDITOR, SVN_EDITOR and other such environment variables to xed.
Something like this was possible before using open -b com.apple.Xcode, but the problem with that way of doing things is that you had to quit XCode afterwards to convince things like Perforce that your edits had been completed (perforce typically invokes the editor for you, then waits until you’ve finished editing a specification file before doing something with it).
]]>Something like this was possible before using open -b com.apple.Xcode, but the problem with that way of doing things is that you had to quit XCode afterwards to convince things like Perforce that your edits had been completed (perforce typically invokes the editor for you, then waits until you’ve finished editing a specification file before doing something with it).
The nice thing with the xed command is that it has a -w flag which does just what is needed in most cases - it sits in a loop spinning until XCode tells it that you have closed the file that it opened. This allows you to use XCode as your general text editor without it interfering with your normal work.
Nice touch…
]]>"If you've met a lovely women, do you really worry about what she did before she met you?"
Could have come straight out of the Ian Holloway book of quotes that one...
Tags: qpr, football
Previous versions had a few problems, but this one is working fine so far.
See this forum thread for more details.
Tags: lastfm, leopard
So far, I have to say, my reaction to it is very positive. I haven't discovered many revolutionary changes yet (I haven't played with Time Machine, although I think it could be just what I want), but I've found lots of small improvements and nice tweaks.
The interface changes are a bit dour, with the whole thing feeling slightly more corporate and less glam, but on the whole they have improved consistency which can only be a good thing. And everything feels a little bit slicker and smoother. It might even be faster, although sometimes that can be caused more by the overall spring-cleaning than by the new OS, so I'm not certain.
The biggest improvements so far are in the general area of networking. Integration seems to be a lot better, it's much easier to just find and use network devices. Finally, all the PCs on our office network just show up instantly in the network browser, as do printers etc. The user and network administration has had some nice tweaks: single-use guest logins and sharing-only users are both neat additions.
Best of all, they've actually put a feature into Mail that I asked for! You can now choose a smart folder that Mail will use when calculating the unread count to put in the little red badge it shows in the Dock. This is excellent for me - I tend to have a lot of unread mail but I have one or two smart folders which filter out the stuff that I actually need to deal with right now, so having the red badge show only when there is something to look at in one of these folders is really handy.
Early days yet, but so far, so good.
]]>Unfortunately we've had all sorts of hassles with it's Mac support over the years. Now, surprise surprise, MacOS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) comes out, and what do you know? Checkpoint doesn't work!
This is despite the fact that as registered developers with Apple we've had access to pre-release versions of Leopard for months and months, and so, presumably, have CheckPoint (if they wanted).
Luckily, there seems to be another option. We've discovered something called IPSecuritas. This seems to work with our VPN hardware, supports 10.5, and best of all, it's free.
Tags: vpn, leopard, secureclient, ipsecuritas
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