Mac Samurai

A story about BazaarX & Gitty

2009-10-26T21:05:00.001-05:00

So the reason for this blog post is that I feel the need to explain why Gitty isn't open source, considering how a long time back I wrote about how it was open source and how it relates to the former sister project BazaarX, and how Gitty got to the state it's at now.So this story actually starts with BazaarX. BazaarX is a similar project to Gitty in that it aims to be a DVCS client but for Bazaar

Test

2009-09-12T11:54:00.001-05:00

Testing Some CSS Stuff... nothing to see heretypedef void (^MyBlock)(void); MyBlock inBlock = ^{ for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { NSLog(@"Doing Something with... %i",i); }}; //<-- remove this semicolon here... inBlock(); //<-- ..and clang says it's missing a ';' here

Going from Failing to Straight A's with OmniFocus & GTD

2009-05-21T21:35:00.001-05:00

I once sucked at being a StudentIf you've been following me on Twitter you've probably seen me going on about my grades, some people have literally asked me if I've ever gotten anything other than A's. That answer is a definite YES. In fact my getting Straight A's has only been a relatively recent phenomenon. I used to really suck to the point at the end of classes I was struggling and just

Git Instaweb on Mac OS X

2009-04-07T23:12:00.001-05:00

When you first see the git instaweb command on Mac OS X you probably think "oh man this could be cool, an instantly available web view of my git repo!" and then you try it only to get the messageDeathscythe% git instaweblighttpd not found. Install lighttpd or use --httpd to specify another httpd daemon.Deathscythe% By default you probably won't have lighttpd installed and Apache isn't in the

A Reminder

2009-03-16T23:36:00.001-05:00

Some days I get completely caught up too much in wanting to get tasks done that you end up accomplishing absolutely nothing. In examining some days when I get like this my initial conclusion has been that I didn't start out the day looking at my objectives, the reasoning behind this I believe is that I get to wanting to process my RSS, Email and do objectives that I become a task zombie &

CWQueue

2009-02-16T23:26:00.001-06:00

Something I whipped up tonight. It's a visual Implementation of a Queue activity viewer that was inspired by Martin Pilkintons Activity viewer for LightHouse Keeper. Basically it's a NSView subclass for the alternating row background and each row (activity Op) is a NSViewController.

Don't F***ing do stuff behind your customers back

2009-02-09T13:39:00.001-06:00

Well, as Windows 7 came out recently I thought I might give that a try, long story short the image is still stored on my external HD. But I thought I might update Vista and give it another try, long story short there was a LOT of updating and very little general use, more like Vista turned into the Windows Updater Game. During this update process something came up that really pissed me offNo not

Access as a priority or resource.accessTime = (important) ? O(1) : O(N!)

2009-01-28T22:15:00.001-06:00

Recently I switched to MailPlane as my default Email client. No this isn't about praising MailPlane by itself (it does have some weaknesses compared to Mail.app which it succeeded in replacing) but rather this is about access as a priority to a resource.I noticed that with Mail.app it took what seemed at least 7-10 minutes for it to fully download all my email from GMail. Granted i have 30,000+

MTV Woke up & suddenly realized they once showed music videos

2008-10-29T10:44:00.001-05:00

Nightwish |MTV Musicvia www.mtvmusic.com

My Review: Code Complete 2

2008-10-22T14:48:00.001-05:00

Well, I just finished reading Code Complete 2 and just posted a quick note on twitter about this then right away got a few responses asking for my opinion on it.The Short answer: It's a well written and very thought out book on general tips for everything from how you should design classes, to the overall design of your application, how you review your code, how you should format your code,etc.

Time flies by fast...

2008-10-03T20:12:00.001-05:00

Well I feel like i've been really silent lately, though (like John I feel obligated to pimp my twitter name to people who don't know it yet) if you follow me on twitter ( http://twitter.com/CocoaSamurai ) you can usually read my small rantings. I've been reading Code Complete 2 and finding it to be an unusually good help. I thought I could gain a couple good tips from it, but it's reshaping the

Inbox Zero: The Case for Smart Mailboxes

2008-09-24T12:06:00.001-05:00

As I strive to become more and more efficient and spend less time in the small details one thing I learned about was Inbox Zero. One of the central Ideas in Inbox Zero is quickly processing email and acting on it. For me I saw a perfect opportunity to use an existing feature in Mail.app... Smart MailboxesInterestingly many people whom I've heard practice Inbox Zero don't use Smart Mailboxes at

My Review: Xcode 3 Unleashed

2008-09-17T16:56:00.001-05:00

I agreed to read and review Xcode 3 Unleashed for the Des Moines Cocoaheads, here is my review:When I first got Xcode 3 unleashed I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Most of the Mac/Cocoa books I've read so far have some sort of angle to them and usually it's your a beginner or you're an expert and little in between. The preface of the book had me worried because the author states it was written

My Developer Philosophy: Why I use the Samurai moniker

2008-09-12T21:55:00.001-05:00

I was going through my RSS feeds and links from Twitter and other sources and came across this in which Joel Spolsky is quoted as saying:"The audience of people that read Coding Horror and the audience of people that read Joel on Software are already fairly elite in the programmers, because they are the kind of people who read things in order to better themselves as programmers. And that's

What I've been reading lately

2008-09-08T11:45:00.001-05:00

Now that I am finished with school (though DMACC still hasn't confirmed I am on the right requirements list and thus done with them for good) I finally have time to go through and read books that I didn't really have as much time before. I don't know why but I thought I would just share this with you. First I've gotta give a shout out to a book I finished reading just before the end of

Getting Things Done: Post School

2008-08-28T13:50:00.001-05:00

The biggest challenge for me post school seems to be scheduling and prioritizing tasks each day. When school was in session it's incredibly easy to decide what to work on when. I usually went through the following process during my weekly review(1) Write monday or m, tuesday or t, etc in each column and one for the weekend on my whiteboard(2) write down all the times I have to go to school during

Culvers Flavor of the Day Fail

2008-08-24T21:54:00.001-05:00

Ladies & Gentlemen...

2008-08-07T18:08:00.001-05:00

I AM DONE WITH SCHOOL!!! That is all.

Things to do after School

2008-08-06T19:55:00.001-05:00

My parents think that I would be bored and wouldn't know what to do with my time once I am done with school. WRONG! Here's a partial List* Learn Python* Research General OS Design* Finish Reading Mac OS X Internals* Finish Reading Inside the Machine ( Microprocessor Design (Currently reading this every day ) * Research what I'd need to do to start a Software business in Iowa ( fees, costs, where

My Future

2008-07-29T21:22:00.001-05:00

Well, as School is nearing its end for me I am thinking about what any person in my state would think about... the future.I got word back from Apple basically telling me the interview went great, but implied that the job hadn't been requisitioned yet, which they told me before and at the interview. I think the interview went good even if I embarrassingly had a brain fart and forgot what a

Got to see California again! (Apple Interview)

2008-07-12T00:46:00.001-05:00

I made it out to California again only a few weeks after WWDC.This time Apple paid for the trip to bring me out there, and rent a car, hotel, etc. Wednesday I learned that the Airlines/Des Moines Airport is incredibly uncoordinated sometimes. Someone at Apple called me to let me know that my scheduled flight had been cancelled as I was getting into the airport. When I looked up that flight it

Apple Interview

2008-07-03T23:32:00.001-05:00

It looks like I am headed out to California again, only 4 weeks after I got back from San Francisco I am headed out to Apples Campus in Cupertino for an interview and am incredibly excited to get the opportunity to do so. It'd be nice to see Mark again while I am there, if only for a brief period of time Thursday (assuming I have time to do so), but we'll have to see about that. Anyway wish me

My New Project: Gitty

2008-06-18T22:46:00.001-05:00

So recently I started a new project called GItty. Gitty is an open source Mac OS X app that can inspect and help manage your GIT Repository. I am however not writing it from scratch, it is based off of BazaarX another open source project by 2 people i know from the Mac Developer Roundtable podcast I was on. BazaarX does the same thing Gitty does except for Bazaar repositories both of which are

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Stupid Design

2008-06-14T22:53:00.001-05:00

Thought this was a great commentary by Neil Tyson

Another Futurama Movie! The Beast with a Billion Backs Trailer!

2008-05-28T22:47:00.001-05:00

http://blog.grimpuppy.com/2008/05/futurama-beast-with-billion-backs.htmlIt looks like this one should be a good one :D

I can't wait till I get one of these in my Laptops

2008-05-26T08:27:00.001-05:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080526/tc_afp/skoreaelectronicsitsamsungchipSamsung has introduced a 256 GB Solid State HD for laptops. Hello fast boot times and faster compile times!

Tidy Browser

2008-05-19T16:04:00.001-05:00

One thing I've realized as of the last few months is that I must have the opposite problems of everybody else in regard to managing published content in terms of RSS feeds and tabs in browsers.RSS FeedsOne thing I've come to do every so often is prune my RSS feeds. They are a special variety of published content because, unlike e-mail which comes in at a mostly constant flow, some RSS feeds

I was on the Mac Developer Roundtable

2008-05-09T10:22:00.001-05:00

I was an invited guest on the Mac Developer Roundtable and came on to talk Source Code Management and to advocate for GIT. It was my first time ever on a podcast and I was a bit nervous, still listening to the first part of it right now, but it sounds pretty good so far. Please forgive all the "uhs" I do, Im normally a lot more confident speaking publicly, but I didn't know what to expect on the

The Future is not bad

2008-05-08T14:09:00.001-05:00

Well my grades for this term are inComputer Network Literacy: AC++: ASystems & Information Management: AFundamentals of Oral Communication: B+GPA this term 3.83, it raised my overall GPA a good amount, but not nearly what I was hoping for. My GPA last term was 3.93 because I got nothing, but straight A's and I was really hoping to continue that trend. However my teacher in Fundamentals of Oral

Apple: No Soup for you!

2008-05-07T00:10:00.001-05:00

In a D'oh! moment I put in an if and an unconditional else (don't ask me why, it's been fixed) and as a result a nil NSError object got presented and I discovered that Apple put in a message scolding any developer that does this. Click on the pic to see a bigger version of the screenshot.if you can't see it the message reads "...A generic error message will be displayed, but the user deserves

PIcs from what's been going on lately

2008-05-03T14:53:00.001-05:00

In case your not subscribed to my flickr Photo feed ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/colinw/ ) here has been what's going on latelyPre-Graduation Ceremony (even though I don't graduate until August)Ames repairing curbsidesNow I have a few weeks off before school starts up again, so it's time to study & code like crazy and get a working app finished by WWDC :)

I've received my 2nd WWDC Student Scholarship

2008-04-30T22:07:00.001-05:00

I've been waiting all month for word and today I finally I got confirmation from Apple that i've received a Student Scholarship for WWDC 2008. This is the 2nd and my last WWDC Student Scholarship as I will be graduating in August. This will be the best WWDC ever as I have more connections and am more well known and people I really want to meet up with. Hopefully the sessions will be great and

How GCC Divides Integers

2008-04-30T19:22:00.001-05:00

Fascinating article on how GCC divides integers via Assembler. Despite the URL/title the article is very SFW. Textual Pornography : The voodoo of gcc, Part I.

Damn it's a nice day today

2008-04-29T14:52:00.001-05:00

After lunch I decided to take a walk and halfway through the walk decided to take a stroll by the bike path near AHS. Click on the photo's for the full size pic if you want.

Could DMACC be any more confusing

2008-04-27T19:45:00.001-05:00

So this term appears to be the term of evening courses. My courses this (hopefully my last term) are only offered in the evening and only at the Urban Campus. Which I guess can be good if it gives me time during the day to work, however my work schedule as of lately has not been good and it's too late at this point to get another job when there is the possibility that I might not even be in Iowa

My First Podcast

2008-04-25T19:15:00.001-05:00

So today I went from being a listener on a podcast to being an active participant. I joined several others for the Mac Developer Roundtable for a discussion on Source Code Management. Overall it went fairly well, I honestly didn't know what do expect in the beginning but after a while I got the hang of it and we got a good discussion going. I expected people to be mainly for one type of SCM and

son i need that video 83 days ago!

2008-04-23T21:10:00.001-05:00

only -83.5 days left to transcode my video!

Wow there is a lot going on

2008-04-22T20:34:00.001-05:00

Mac Developer RoundtableI am going to be a guest on the Mac Developer Roundtable podcast which is recording this Friday. The topic is Source Code Management ( Subversion, GIT, GUI Tools, etc.) I am very excited to get on.Finals & Finishing up the home stretchI've got my Computer Network Literacy class complete and I am getting close to getting C++ complete and next week I have my last class and

Is it just me...

2008-04-19T23:25:00.001-05:00

or is this the most awesome commercial the Discovery Channel has made to date

New MacBook Pro Battery FTW!

2008-04-17T16:05:00.001-05:00

So I've explained before that my MacBook Pro's battery essentially just tanked one day and was getting like an hour's worth of battery life from it (I actually managed to max it out at 1 hour 20 minutes one time.) Well, I went down to the Apple Store at Jordan Creek and they basically looked at it and realized that there was a problem. Despite my MacBook Pro being out of warranty and not having

Graduation Ceremonies

2008-04-16T15:26:00.001-05:00

Now maybe it's just me, but the notion of having a graduation ceremony where I am not graduating and will not be graduating for several months seems rather meaningless & pointless. The graduation ceremony is at the end of this term on May 1 I think and the earliest at which I could graduate is in August. And in fact I wouldn't be going at all if it were not for my parents who are forcing me into

I can has an A?

2008-04-11T10:46:00.001-05:00

Ever since last term where I got all A's in everything, I wanted to try and repeat that success again this term and so far I am doing thatA (just 1% off from an A+) in Management Information SystemsA+ in C++A+ in Computer Network Literacywith one exceptionIm probably at a B/B+ in my Speech Class AKA "Fundamentals of Oral Communication" right now because it seems no matter what I do I can't score

Because...

2008-04-06T22:12:00.001-05:00

I don't know how this came upit's a well known fact that using Keynote makes you 5x more appealing to the ladies and gives you a 3x better chance of getting laid - via Twitter

Crazy Link: Bikini Wielding Samurai Girls

2008-04-05T12:12:00.001-05:00

Another link from the Twitter side. Sortta reminded me of the Machine Girl trailer which (if you didn't know who made it) you would swear that Quentin Tarantino had made it as sort of a crazy japanese take on Kill Bill. The trailer is both crazy and interesting at the same time. I don't know if I'd watch it, but it's definitely got my attention.Link to original page with treaser and poster: http:

So suddenly my MBP's Battery is sucking major time

2008-04-04T01:05:00.001-05:00

So out of the blue one day I take my MBP off the charger in the morning one day and put it in my bag and take it to school and open it and at least 14-15% of my Batteries charge is already gone after about 30-40 minutes which it take for me to get there, for reference that's about how much I lose overnight if I forget to leave it on the charger from a fully charged state. Worse yet I am getting

I am a Speaking Machine

2008-03-30T23:02:00.001-05:00

Through my own volunteering and academic requirements I am going to be doing a lot of speeches/tech talks of sorts this month. Here are the speeches I am givingCocoaHeads: Multithreading on Mac OS X (POSIX, NSThread, NSOperation,etc)IgniteIT: Managing Information Overflow (probably a definite Yes this talk will be given @ this point)IgniteIT: Why your User Interface Sucks ( has enough votes & is

Finally Source Code Syntax color working now / TextMate Bug

2008-03-29T14:30:00.001-05:00

Just some sample code of working with NSOperation 1 NSOperationQueue *que = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init]; 2 3 loginThread = [[RFNetworkThread alloc] initWithUsername:userName 4 andPassword:password]; 5 6 [loginThread addObserver:self 7 forKeyPath:@"isFinished" 8 options:0 9

MacDev's (including me) get Rick Rolled

2008-03-26T20:04:00.001-05:00

Just after i put up a small post about Rick Astley talking about Rick Rolling I got Rick Rolled by of all people Mat Gemmellhttp://mattgemmell.com/rickroll.html

RedFlag Subversion version on About Box again

2008-03-26T00:27:00.001-05:00

I've got to do some customization to the about box eventually but now I've fixed the failing perl script that automatically adds the subversion version to the about box again so you'll always know which version from the subversion repository you have. In this case the 70M means subversion revision 70 locally modified.

What's Interesting about Iowa?

2008-03-25T20:51:00.001-05:00

At this point in my life asking me to do a speech on what's interesting about Iowa is basically equivalent to asking me what's Interesting about Peter Griffin Farting.... Absolutely fucking nothing, why the fuck do you think I wanna move to Silicon Valley in California so badly? Or just anywhere where there's more tech action going on.Expanded from a Tweet on Twitter

Rick Astley Speaks about Rick Rolling

2008-03-25T20:35:00.001-05:00

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/03/rick-astley-kin.html

I don't get a good feeling about this

2008-03-24T10:35:00.001-05:00

A couple hours and waiting... I have my mail messages on Apple Mail which I hope are all there. Update: Im back in finally after waiting about 5 hours... looks like everything is there and OK now

NSOperation vs NSThread

2008-03-22T20:43:00.001-05:00

I just got done throwing a volley of tests at both NSOperation vs NSThread for thread creation and management on Mac OS X and they both perform well. However when it comes to dependency management and becoming aware of when threads are done executing it's NSOperation by a knockout. Thus RedFlag will use NSOperation to spawn threads :D

Evidently my ADC Objective-C Book is now a rare collectors item

2008-03-22T14:54:00.001-05:00

People on twitter didn't seem to believe me at first that such a thing as an ADC Objective-C Programming Language book existed, but I was backed up by Scott Stevenson who in fact also has the Objective-C book and a similar one on Mac OS X from about the year 2000 or so. So I had to stop chatting in the middle of conversation with Tiki Bar TV people to take a pic and show everybody that in fact I

100% Ready to Go

2008-03-20T20:04:00.001-05:00

Guess what I will be coding for the next few days?

Motherfucker

2008-03-20T19:27:00.001-05:00

Sometimes using the right API from the start can save you time and a lot of hassle. The 1st option works 100% reliably and doesn't crash your application NSURLCredential *userCredentials = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:userName password:password persistence:

How NOT to design User Interfaces ( XP vs Vista )

2008-03-18T20:43:00.001-05:00

Quick lesson in User Interface Design or why Microsoft totally fucked up some elements of the Vista UI that WERE working in XPThe Vista Disk DefragmenterThere are a couple of big glaring elements here. (1) From a Few Minutes to a Few Hours?! Wtf that's a pretty damn big difference and leaves the user with no clue as to how long it's going to take (2) there is no progress bar or any indicator(3)

My First online video ( My 4G iPod's Beginning to Die )

2008-03-17T21:04:00.001-05:00

Im liking Viddler a lot lately because it's videos can be much higher quality than YouTube. So I decided to give it a test and upload a video I never intended to share with anyone that shows my 4G iPod Slowly dying.)

So let me get this straight...

2008-03-17T13:08:00.001-05:00

"The iPhone: a vibration-capable, multi-touch-sensitive, accelerometer-equipped device that you're _not_ allowed to make porn for." - Matt Gemmell [via Twitter]

What is it with the Finnish and Rock?

2008-03-17T09:54:00.001-05:00

Another band makes an impression on me and makes it onto my coding list (songs I listen to when coding) with their elegant mix of a sweet female voice, rock and orchestra mixed into 1 great package. Listen to them belowNightwishalong with Wintersun you've got 1 great collection of music.

Someone is clearly jealous

2008-03-15T23:25:00.001-05:00

I was browsing through my top keywords in my blog analytics recently and saw theseiPhone SDK WindowsiPhone SDK for WindowsiPhone SDK on Windowssomeone is clearly jealous that the iPhone is running Mac OS X and can't be run on Windows ;)

NSOperation Madness

2008-03-13T23:48:00.001-05:00

So I found the problem to my NSOperation/Authenticated NSURLConnection problem. From Apples Documentation: Note: Regardless of the date you specify in runMode:beforeDate: and runUntilDate:, a run loop with nothing to do (that is no sources from which to receive input) exits immediately. You must add the input sources to the run loop mode before you start the run loop. Other parts of the system

Mid-Term Grade Status

2008-03-13T11:06:00.001-05:00

C++ ( A+ )Computer Network Literacy ( A+ )Management Information Systems ( A )Fundamentals of Oral Communication (aka Speech class) ( B+ )I am unhappy with B+ grade in Speech, but I don't have my groups big speech grade back yet and I can definitely get it up to a A/A+ range by the end of the term with all the big (individual) speeches coming up where I can be more creative. Also I briefly fell

That's quite a large distance to be off by

2008-03-12T16:59:00.001-05:00

On finding the DMACC West Campus in Google Maps (Web) vs Google Maps (iPhone) it gives me 2 completely different locations. The pin on the left I MANUALLY inserted and it where DMACC West Campus ACTUALLY is whereas the pin on the right is all the way across Des Moines and is where Google Maps on the iPhone thinks the campus is at. That's a long fucking distance to be off by. Maybe Google Maps is

Managing time

2008-03-04T18:47:00.002-06:00

Man it's been a long time since I've posted here. I guess I haven't realized how much i've been doing in other places. I came back to my Twitter account and now I am talking to many of the other Cocoa developers out there and so many of them post excellent links on there. My Twitter page is at http://twitter.com/CocoaSamurai and you can subscribe to them, I don't rampantly post to there all the

And the only news that really matters this week is...

2008-02-19T11:45:00.002-06:00

HD-DVD is officially dead. Finally this ridiculous drawn out Hi-Def format war is over and Blu-Ray won. Now let's make the Playstation 3 a bit cheaper and with Heavenly Sword, Devil May Cry 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4 i'll be as happy as I could possibly be. Sure Castro did announce he's retiring (but the impact won't be felt for a while) and im sure other stuff happened... Anyway finally from chaos

This is how I roll

2008-02-17T21:21:00.004-06:00

Spotted at Hollywood Video on the middle of the week, Futurama got 2 shelfs worth of space! And Family Guy (you can't see it that well in this pic) only got 1 slot. Anyway Im glad more and more of my friends lately seem to be adopting GTD as their system for getting organized as (as the name says) getting shit done. One of the crucial parts of GTD is the weekly review. I posted what I go about

Toshiba please do the honorable thing: Kill HD-DVD now

2008-02-16T18:47:00.003-06:00

Dear Toshiba,Look you've had a good run on HD-DVD, i'll admit it. There were plenty of times when I thought you might win, when Microsoft came out with a cheap HD-DVD add on to the Xbox 360, when the Playstation 3 with Blu-Ray wasn't doing so well,etc. But let's face it you've flat out lost. Warner and New Line brought your studio support down to 2 studios, Wal-Mart is going blu-ray exclusive,

This is how hard I work

2008-02-13T19:12:00.002-06:00

I was working this evening and suddenly got a bunch of calls in. The last few nights there was barely any, and so I looked in a few stores and saw a ton of transactions and so I was like "wtf why are we getting so many calls? and why do the stores have so many stores have a bunch of transactions?" Then I looked up at the date.... fuck im not gonna get any work done tonight.

Woah!

2008-02-12T21:56:00.003-06:00

MacBook Pro (1) 2GB RAM ModuleApple Store Listing: $300Everybody Else: about $60 - $100Why did I have to track down several sites to find one that offered a single 2GB module vs 2 x 1GB modules? Is it really that rare for a MBP owner to have 2GB and then wanna upgrade to 3GB?

Nothing

2008-02-10T23:09:00.000-06:00

Not to go on an egocentric rant, but for the first time ever I find myself doing a weekly review (GTD) and almost not knowing what to do (other than my cocoa projects) because every assignment I could possibly do for the week (that I know of at the moment) has been completed. Every week this term and last term was so concentrated on assignments that I was able to get to them and my essential

That great feeling :D

2008-02-08T22:24:00.000-06:00

I just got everything I wanted to get done on my To Do list Things to focus on Today list, isn't Getting Things Done Great! :D Not only that, but I got everything done a couple hours earlier than I thought.Part of my weekly review is I lay out a column view of the days that week and begin adding commitments and due dates. I start out by addingTimes I have class atTimes I am scheduled to workDue

Locking myself away

2008-02-08T11:19:00.001-06:00

Well this is one of those days were I am taking myself offline to get stuff done. To be specific I am trying to get as much homework done as possible so I have time to do things I want like working on my Cocoa projects, etc. I still think it's possible I can definitely get my entire terms worth of Computer Network Literacy classes work done for the term done by next week. I'll probably check back

My first time at the Genius Bar

2008-02-02T00:13:00.000-06:00

Im still extremely tired from all the running and driving around I've done today, but I thought i'd write this down before I go to bed for the day.At some point during the day yesterday I decided to stick my iPhone on a alarm clock/stereo (not mine) to play music from it. Looking back I realized that the plates for the various ipod models weren't on it so just the raw pins were exposed. I stuck

An Idea

2008-01-23T21:28:00.000-06:00

At work yesterday I got absolutely no calls so I was able to get most of my homework done and watch some episodes. At the end of the night I had an idea of something deviously new to do for my Cocoa Samurai blog. I had thought about doing this before, but I couldn't possibly have done it before I got one of the apps in the MacHeist bundle ;)I'll do a test and probably send it out to just Mark,

Trying to achieve Zen

2008-01-20T22:30:00.000-06:00

School UnderwayWell the current school term (my 2nd to last ( as long as scheduling goes OK )) is underway and I am now really starting to get into things. My 2 online courses (for time conveniences sake) have all the assignment dates mapped into OmniFocus, I am periodically syncing with iCal, etc. And I am fully back on the GTD bandwagon of weekly reviews :DIn terms of keeping on tasks one of

iPhone now! Threads, and Vista

2008-01-13T16:57:00.000-06:00

Tuesday cannot come soon enough as my 4G iPod just died yesterday and my current Verizon Phone (a RAZR) is going nuts. Essentially I went to listen to my iPod on Friday night and discovered that when I turned it on it said there was no music, playlists or podcasts on it. Then I tried turning it on again later and it went into the Apple symbol then brought up the folder with an explanation mark.

Sometimes I hate threads

2007-12-29T00:53:00.001-06:00

As much as I am getting used to doing things the threaded way I still get stung by threads as well. In the pic above you can clearly see that my Network thread is indeed being spawned and executed as well as a Keychain thread is being spawned as well. However somewhere along the line the Keychain thread is being locked and not doing what its supposed to be doing and thus I am not getting

Leaving Verizon and other misc stuff

2007-12-23T22:09:00.000-06:00

Leaving Verizon and going to AT&T and a iPhone?I found out that my contract with Verizon ends this summer and all I can say is that I probably won't be going back. For starters Im embarrassed to be under the service of a company that can't figure out the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents. But that's not the biggest thing for me. The biggest thing is the insistence on locking down

Best Semester Yet! ( Final Grades )

2007-12-20T16:59:00.000-06:00

Intro to Business: A-E-Commerce on the Web: ACommunication Skills: AIntro to Computers: AIntro to Psychology: A

There is something wrong with the AIR uninstaller when it requires AIR to run

2007-12-18T18:15:00.001-06:00

Wow I won! And to think I didn't even know I had a ticket!

2007-12-15T20:14:00.001-06:00

Im sorry I couldn't resist. This one spam got through GMail's and Mail's spam filters and it was so hilarious I couldn't resist posting it. A UK Lotto paying out money in US Dollars selected from "Wordwide Websites" and I can only make a claim via e-maill! Microsoft and Power Lotto are so generous! With a e-mail so free of grammatical and spelling errors and that somehow implies that your

and another domain

2007-12-14T20:48:00.000-06:00

like john I decided to buy a domain with my name so now I own colinwheeler.com and it'll just forward to this blog. I had it on domain forwarding and it's working right now, but I am going to take it off of that and put it on domain masking here soon so depending on when you read this it may be up or down.

4 down 1 to go, Dictionary wild-card, other stuff (UPDATED)

2007-12-14T15:43:00.000-06:00

Almost there...DONEIntro to ComputersIntro to PsychologyCommunication SkillsE-Commerce on the Web (not going to have a final on mon - would have just been a party anyway)To Go (on f**king monday morning - cannot come soon enough)Intro to BusinessAt least I have time to go over my Intro to Business Report and presentation this weekend in between callsIn other news I just discovered that Dictionary

F**K!!!

2007-12-11T13:33:00.000-06:00

Even though it would have been hazardous today I really wish I had gotten my Intro to Business Final done. Now I go from being done on the 13th to being done on the 17th. My final is at 8 AM on Monday, the problem is I was originally scheduled to work from 9 - 6 that day so now I have to decrease my time at work. If this damn storm had only come 1 day earlier or 1 day later it wouldn't have been

Gone (see pic) nuff said

2007-12-10T13:25:00.001-06:00

1729.us is up... sortta

2007-12-05T23:02:00.000-06:00

got the DNS changed to new hosting and once Finals are done with I'll try and see what I can do with ithttp://www.1729.us/

It's almost over :D

2007-12-04T22:43:00.000-06:00

I finished my redundant (but necessary unfortunately) Intro to Computers course by acing my MS Access test (which I did zero studying on)I appear to be on a hot streak as I finish Intro to Psychology by acing my tests (perfect 100% or >=95%)What I have left before the end of the term next weekIntro to Business(1) Test on Thursday(2) Report & Speech Presentation on my made up created Business

I own a domain again :D

2007-11-30T00:36:00.000-06:00

well I decided to buy a domain and go out on my own. I wanted something with 1729 in the domain, I tried .com, .net, .org etc and they've all been taken so I got 1729.us. So what's so special about 1729? You'll have to see why here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)could I have gone with something like madprogrammer.com or crazydev.com or something like that well yeah, but those are taken

Futurama is back from the ashes! Benders Big Score is now out! :D

2007-11-27T15:32:00.000-06:00

Whew! The idiots at Fox may have cancelled Futurama but it's fans kept pushing for it to return and finally our wishes have been granted. Benders Big Score has finally been released and I just got done watching it and I absolutely loved it! I won't pull any spoilers except to say that a lot of time travel is involved to an insane degree and they keep twisting the story straight up till the end.

Benders Big Score is out tomorrow (Futurama Returns Baby!)

2007-11-26T07:12:00.001-06:00

W00t! Futurama finally returns tomowow with the release of Benders Big Score and so far the reviews have all been good. I am personally going straight from school to WalMart, Target, or whatever is closest on the way home and picking up a copy. I can't wait!With 3 more DVD movies and at least 13 more episodes it appears that Futurama has come back even better than Family Guy. I just can't wait

Getting DrawBench done (Garbage Collection Draw Benchmark App)

2007-11-23T21:19:00.000-06:00

Well as i've finally been getting some quality free time i've finally had time to work on the DrawBench app. Basically the idea is to run varying tests and to see how long varying drawing operations take to complete various drawing operations under normal operations and under garbage collection. Apple has said there is about a 25% performance drop for apps heavily using Garbage Collection, my aim

Almost brings tears to my eyes to finally see this after so long

2007-11-17T00:13:00.000-06:00

On Time Machine :D

2007-11-14T23:04:00.000-06:00

Woot! Got my 500GB hard drive (I call it Deathscythe) and plopped all the files from my full 200GB hard drive (Big O) (which only has 14MB free) onto it and then wiped Big O clean and turned it into a Dedicated Time Machine Backup drive :D Man the effects on time machine are neat, if you've only looked at a screenshot or watched a video you haven't experienced time machine. It's nice to have the

Finally! Good Firewire 400/800 HD Found!

2007-11-11T23:50:00.000-06:00

I didn't see this hard drive on newegg before but I finally found a 500GB Firewire 400/800 HD found which is essentially a newer version of the HD I already have except it's 500GB instead of 200GB and also has eSATA (don't have a clue what it is except it's supposed to be fast) and it looks like the one I already have. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154178&ATT=22-154-178&

W00t! I love NSOperation :D

2007-11-10T20:39:00.000-06:00

I've been playing around with NSOperation before for spawning CPU intensive calculation threads but just now got it working for spawning networking threads to receive data from del.icio.us :DIt's a little buggy at the moment but I am definitely receiving data and am able to view it, however it appears they aren't getting my credentials for some reason so it's giving me the HTML code for a warning

Motherfucker

2007-11-07T17:21:00.000-06:00

You know that scene in Family Guy where Dick Cheney is a Wal-Mart Greeter and repeatedly says "Go Fuck yourself" to everybody that comes in? Well that's pretty much how I felt like todayI would post the youtube clip except it's been taken down!!!... Fuck! I can't find the clip anywhere!!!

On Leopard and other stuff

2007-11-03T00:56:00.000-05:00

Well Im not really out of date people, i am on leopard and have been for a while now it's just now that the Gold Master was released to the public that I can finally say so. I have previously run my WWDC 06 release of leopard, then several of the developer seeds and finally 9A581 the Gold Master.However (I hypothesize) that because I installed Leopard from a burned DVD (double layer) (from an ADC

Ah... I am not going to miss this

2007-10-26T21:24:00.001-05:00

Goodbye virtue desktops! You've been helpful and yet also been a big unreliable pain in the ass at times. I have Leopard and will install it tomorrow :DGoogle enabled IMAP on my primary account ;) :DNow I if I get a good score on my Psychology test tomorrow and can be a productive Code Monkey all will be good with the world :)

The Number Scheme Cracked

2007-10-25T23:22:00.000-05:00

*Sigh* slightly disappointed in you people. I expected Meridith or Nick or maybe possibly john to crack this but nobody got it except for mdmunoz who didn't get exactly what I wanted but stumbled onto the pattern I was looking for. Let's review. I gave the following example 62840741852963086420and said find the pattern inherent to the numbers and give me the pattern that precedes it. So what is