otaku-elite

New Web Comics Section Added!

2025-04-15T07:06:08-05:00

While staying in Japan for the past few weeks, I’ve encountered a lot of strange and fun situations I’ve decided to write about. However, rather than writing about them in a blog I thought it would be more fun to illustrate these crazy scenes as a way to also keep up a new drawing habit I’ve been wanting to start for a while.

Say hello to the new comics section of the website. My first strip is titled Meanwhile in Japan and features my fun-filled crazy action-packed — okay maybe it’s none of these — adventures.

鮭のホイル焼き作りましょ！Let's Make Salmon Foil-Yaki!

2015-02-22T00:00:00-06:00

日本語で！ Japanese Version

皆のもの！今日は鮭のホイル焼きのレシピを紹介するでござる！これも日本の友達が俺に教えてくれたレシピでござる。簡単に調理できるので是非作ってみてね。用意するものはアルミホイルだよ！

材料

鮭 (４きれ)
キャベツ (半個)
玉ねぎ (半分)
バター (お好み)

調味料

味噌 (レンゲ２杯)
みりん (レンゲ２杯)
酒 (レンゲ２杯)

調味料を混ぜる
鮭と野菜を切る。キャベツの芯の部分は使わない。
アルミホイルの上にキャベツ、玉ねぎ、鮭の順にのせ、①をかける。
最後にバターをのせて空気が逃げないようにしっかりホイルを閉じる
フライパンに水150mlと④を並べたら蓋をして強火で5分煮る。
中火に切り替え、10分程度したら火を止める。やわらかめがお好みの人は8分したら火を止めましょう。
お皿に移して完成です！

English Version 英語で！

Hey everybady~ Today we’re gonna cook 鮭のホイル焼き or Foil-cooked Salmon. This recipe was also taught to me by my Japanese friend. It’s super easy to cook. To prepare this meal you will need aluminum foil, of course.

Ingredients

4 slices Salmon (tail is better)
1/2 Small Cabbage.
1/2 Onion
Butter

Seasoning

2 renge Miso
2 renge Mirin
2 renge Sake

Instructions

In a small bowl mix the seasoning together
Cut the cabbage and salmon. You don’t need the hard center part of the cabbage.
On top of a sheet of aluminum foil, place the cabbage, onion, and salmon, in that order. Drizzle the season from step ① on top.
Put thin slices of butter over the salmon and close the foil tightly so that no air can escape.
Add the 150ml of water to the frying pan and the tightly wrapped fish-foils from step ④ and cover with lid. Cook on high heat for 5 minutes.
Switch to medium heat for about 10 minutes, then stop the heat. If you prefer a softer texture you can stop the heat at about 8 minutes or so.
Place foils on a plate and serve!

親子丼作りましょ！ Let's Make Oyakodon!

2015-02-21T00:00:00-06:00

日本語で！ Japanese Version

Skip to english

皆のもの！今日は親子丼のレシピを紹介するでござる！日本人の友達が俺に教えてくれたレシピでござる。店で食べる親子丼より美味しいので是非作ってみてね。特別な調味料がいります：

鶏もも肉 (2,3枚)
溶き卵 (３個分)
玉ねぎ (半分)
米 (１合)
水 (150ml)

調味料:

醤油 (レンゲ八分目２杯)
みりん (レンゲ八分目２杯)
酒 (レンゲ１)
砂糖 (小さじ１)
本だし (小さじ１)
めんつゆ (少々)

鶏肉と玉ねぎをお好みの大きさに切ります。
水と調味料をフライパンに入れて、温めます
フライパンが煮立ったら玉ねぎを加えます
火が通ったら鶏肉も加えます。
両面に火が通るように時間が立ったら裏返して下さい。
玉ねぎと鶏肉に火が通ったら卵を３分の２入れます。
フライパンをかき混ぜ少し立ったら残りの卵を入れます。
火を止めた後、フライパンにふたをすることで蒸気で残りの卵にも火が通ります。
炊きたてのご飯の上にのせて完成です。

はいっっっ！次に英語で書きます！

English Version

Hey everybady~! Introducing today’s Oyakodon recipe. My Japanese friend taught me how to make oyakodon, and it’s better than the restaurant version :D

First, you will need some ingredients:

2 or 3 Boneless chicken thighs
3 scrambled eggs
1/2 Onion
150ml Water
1 cup Rice

and special seasoning:

2 renge Soysauce
2 renge Mirin
1 renge Sake
1 tsp Sugar
1 tsp Hondashi
A dash of Mentsuyu

Before we begin, start cooking the rice (you’re on your own for that part)

Cut the chicken and onions to preference.
Heat up the water and the seasoning in a frying pan
Once the mixture starts bubbling, add the onions.
Once the onions are half cooked, add the chicken
After the side of the chicken pieces starts to turn white, flip the chicken pieces over to cook the underside.
When the chicken and onions are cooked through, add 2/3 of the scrambled eggs into the frying pan
Stir the ingredients in the frying pan, then let it sit for a little bit and add the rest of the eggs.
Turn off the heat and cover with lid until the eggs are half cooked.
Serve over rice.

日本に行きます！ (Going to Japan)

2015-02-20T00:00:00-06:00

皆さん、こんにちは！今日から一ヶ月後に日本に行くことになりました。東京と大阪か博多に行く予定です。友達に会いに行きます。僕は日本にまだ行ったことがないので少し不安ですがとても楽しみにしています。まだ詳しい予定は立ておわっていませんが、面白いレストランや観光地に行く予定です。日本での写真をたくさん載せるので楽しみにしててね :D もう眠いので詳しいことはまた明日書きます〜

じゃあねー

Hey everybody! In exactly one month from today I’ll be going to Japan. I’m going to Tokyo and I’mma prolly hit up Osaka or Hakata. I’ve never been to Japan before so I’m a little scared but it’ll be a lot of fun, no doubt. I still haven’t solidified the details of my trip but I plan on visiting many interesting restaurants and some touristy places, too. I’ll be posting lots of photos from Japan. I’m kinda sleepy now though so I’ll write more tomorrow.

Later!

Adding [Text] Shadows in iOS

2014-11-29T00:00:00-06:00

Although it’s very simple, I often forget how to add a shadow in iOS using Objective-C. It’s not so much that I forget, but that there are certain required parameters that need to be set in order for it to work.

So I’ll post some examples here.

Using CALayer on a UILabel (Should work with any UIView subclass):

self.lblChampionName.layer.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(0, 3); //default is (0.0, -3.0)
self.lblChampionName.layer.shadowColor = [UIColor blackColor].CGColor; //Default value is opaque black.
self.lblChampionName.layer.shadowRadius = 1.0; //default is 3.0
self.lblChampionName.layer.shadowOpacity = .5; //default is 0.0

Important Notes:

CALayer’s shadowColor property takes a CGColor not a UIColor. You can convert UIColor to CGColor using UIColor’s CGColor property as shown above.
shadowOpacity defaults to 0.0, if you don’t set it, you will not see your shadow.

Check the CALayer documentation for more information on the default values and their types.

Adding to a UIButton:

self.btnRollTheDice.titleLabel.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(0, 2);

//setting stately shadow color, also takes a UIColor, not a CGColor.
[self.btnRollTheDice
  setTitleShadowColor:[UIColor blackColor]
  forState:UIControlStateNormal];

Adding to a UILabel without CALayer:

self.lblChampionName.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(0, 2);
self.lblChampionName.shadowColor = [UIColor blackColor]; //takes a UIColor

Adding to a UIButton without CALayer.

self.btnRollTheDice.titleLabel.layer.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(0, 2);
self.btnRollTheDice.titleLabel.layer.shadowColor = [UIColor blackColor].CGColor;
self.btnRollTheDice.titleLabel.layer.shadowOpacity = .5;

Adding drop shadow to a UIView.

If you want to add a drop shadow to a UIView (not a text shadow) you can apply the same CALayer approach as detailed in the first example.

Tidying up

Usually if you have one drop shadow (or text shadow) you want more. We can tidy up and centralize that using a Category in objective-c. See also: Programming with Objective-C: Customizing Existing Classes.

In Xcode 6, select File > New > Objective-C File then select Category as your file type. I named mine DropShadow. Type UIView under Class. This creates the appropriate UIView+DropShadow files.

This is what my code looks like:

UIView+DropShadow.h:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface UIView (DropShadow)

- (void)addDropShadow:(UIColor *)color
  withOffset:(CGSize)offset
  radius:(CGFloat)radius
  opacity:(CGFloat)opacity;

@end

And the implementation file,
UIView+DropShadow.m:

#import "UIView+DropShadow.h"

@implementation UIView (DropShadow)
- (void)addDropShadow:(UIColor *)color
        withOffset:(CGSize)offset
        radius:(CGFloat)radius
        opacity:(CGFloat)opacity
{
  self.layer.shadowColor = color.CGColor;
  self.layer.shadowOffset = offset;
  self.layer.shadowRadius = radius;
  self.layer.shadowOpacity = opacity;
}

@end

and a sample invocation:

[self.lblChampionName addDropShadow:[UIColor blackColor]
                      withOffset:CGSizeMake(0, 3)
                      radius:1.0f
                      opacity:.5];

It’s ultimately the same amount of lines—if you are hard line wrapping like I am—however now we have autocompletion and tabbing.

The next step would be to add some sensible defaults and convenience methods. I added one to our new category, for example:

const CGSize DS_DEFAULT_OFFSET = {0, 2};
const CGFloat DS_DEFAULT_RADIUS = 1.0f;
const CGFloat DS_DEFAULT_OPACITY = 0.8f;

- (void)addDropShadow:(UIColor *)color
{
  [self addDropShadow:color
        withOffset:DS_DEFAULT_OFFSET
        radius:DS_DEFAULT_RADIUS
        opacity:DS_DEFAULT_OPACITY];
}

And now I can add shadows like this:

UIColor *shadowColor = [UIColor blackColor];

[self.btnRollTheDice addDropShadow:shadowColor];
[self.lblChampionName addDropShadow:shadowColor
                      withOffset:CGSizeMake(0, 3)
                      radius:1.0f
                      opacity:.5];

Learn more about const CGStruct and the possible caveats of using the initializer list.

If you wanted to, you could probably add some sort of class methods to change the defaults, that way you could on a per-project basis change your default shadow arguments without too much trouble. But I won’t go into that for now.

Debugging Cordova

2014-11-06T00:00:00-06:00

I had to revisit an old project today that was built on Cordova and App Framework.

It was like hell reacquainting myself with the application and I’m still not through, but I thought I’d post a few quick references that helped me along the way.

App Cache

Since our App uses HTML5 Application Cache and one of our greatest assets in Cordova development is Google Chrome and its robust set of dev tools, I needed a way to clear the app cache in Google Chrome. Which I found is possble by navigating your browser to chrome://appcache-internals/

Android-Chrome Dev Tools

I also found out with USB Debugging enabled you can remotely debug WebViews on android, but it might require additional code:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT) {
    WebView.setWebContentsDebuggingEnabled(true);
}

For debuggable mode only use the following:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT) {
    if (0 != (getApplicationInfo().flags &= ApplicationInfo.FLAG_DEBUGGABLE)) {
        WebView.setWebContentsDebuggingEnabled(true);
    }
}

Then you can open chrome to chrome://inspect and select the device from a list and poke around using Chrome dev tools to mess with JavaScript or CSS on your device on the fly. Another advantage–this one’s my favorite–you can refresh the embedded WebView with ⌘ + R (or I guess Ctrl-R for windows) from the chrome inspector.

Finding The Right Objective C Singleton Idiom

2014-11-04T00:00:00-06:00

In our app at work we use singletons in a few places. But when you search google for you get mixed answers for the right way to implement it.

I became curious as to what the proper way to accomplish this is, and I did some searching. I eventually found the solution and explanation I was searching for in addition to some really good reasons not to use singletons at all. So I’ll discuss all of that right here.

#Method 1. @synchronize When I was doing my original search this seemed to be the most popular answer. This is the way it was implemented in many places in the app.

header file

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <FacebookSDK/FacebookSDK.h>

@interface INTUser : NSObject

@property (nonatomic) NSString *facebookId;
@property (nonatomic, readonly) NSString *facebookBirthday;
@property (nonatomic, readonly) NSString *facebookName;

//... some other code here ...

+(instancetype)manager;

//... some more code here to access/modify the object ...

@end

implementation file

@implementation INTUser

//... some other code here ...

+ (instancetype)manager
{
    static INTUser *selfUser = nil;
    @synchronized(self) {
        if (selfUser == nil) {
            selfUser = [[self alloc] init];
        }
    }
    return selfUser;
}

//... some more code ...

@end

usage

Then we use it like this…

    INTUser *user = [INTUser manager];

##how it works From the Apple documentation regarding the @synchronized directive:

The @synchronized directive is a convenient way to create mutex locks on the fly in Objective-C code. The @synchronized directive does what any other mutex lock would do—it prevents different threads from acquiring the same lock at the same time. In this case, however, you do not have to create the mutex or lock object directly. Instead, you simply use any Objective-C object as a lock token, as shown in the following example:

- (void)myMethod:(id)anObj
{
    @synchronized(anObj)
    {
        // Everything between the braces is protected by the @synchronized directive.
    }
}

We create a mutex using Apple’s @synchronized directive to prevent anyone else from setting ourself (say what?).

Some sources claim that this method is slow, and that when you pass nil—which would essentially happen the first run through—the mutex is actually doing nothing.

I haven’t been able to uncover anything specifically mentioning that you can’t use the @synchronized directive on self or its behavior when you pass nil, but I did find some evidence that it might be slow. Which is really just Apple making a generic statement about thread synchronization as a whole:

Synchronization tools are a useful way to make your code thread-safe, but they are not a panacea. Used too much, locks and other types of synchronization primitives can actually decrease your application’s threaded performance compared to its non-threaded performance. Finding the right balance between safety and performance is an art that takes experience. The following sections provide tips to help you choose the appropriate level of synchronization for your application.

Apple’s documentation continues under a section titled Avoid Synchronization Altogether:

Avoid Synchronization Altogether For any new projects you work on, and even for existing projects, designing your code and data structures to avoid the need for synchronization is the best possible solution. Although locks and other synchronization tools are useful, they do impact the performance of any application. And if the overall design causes high contention among specific resources, your threads could be waiting even longer.

The best way to implement concurrency is to reduce the interactions and inter-dependencies between your concurrent tasks. If each task operates on its own private data set, it does not need to protect that data using locks. Even in situations where two tasks do share a common data set, you can look at ways of partitioning that set or providing each task with its own copy. Of course, copying data sets has its costs too, so you have to weigh those costs against the costs of synchronization before making your decision.

So it seems like the general message here is to avoid using synchronization wherever possible.

Method 2. dispatch_once

After finding more recent results from rewording my search terms, I came across the dispatch_once method, which replaces the @synchronize directive with dispatch_once.

header file

@interface INTHomePresenter : NSObject <INTHomeModuleInterface, CLLocationManagerDelegate>
@property (strong, nonatomic) INTHomeViewController *homeView;

- (void)presentSearchFrom:(UIViewController *)viewController;

//... other code ...

+ (instancetype)sharedInstance;
@end

implementation

@implementation INTHomePresenter

//... other stuff ...

+ (instancetype)sharedInstance
{
    static dispatch_once_t once;
    static id sharedInstance;

    dispatch_once(&once, ^{
        sharedInstance = [[self alloc] init];
    });

    return sharedInstance;
}

//... other stuff ...

@end

usage

[[INTHomePresenter sharedInstance] presentSearchFrom:nav];

how it works

We replace the @synchronize directive with a dispatch_once.

dispatch_once guarantees us that this code will only be fired once, and other threads should be blocked from this as well, which is important because we only want this code to fire once, even if it’s hit by two separate threads. dispatch_once is also synchronous.

It is recommended to use dispatch_once because it is much faster than @synchronized and it is also more clear that not only do we want our code to be thread safe, but more importantly we only want this code block to be executed one time during our program’s execution. Even if we used the @synchronized method, the if statement would still be evaluated every time we call our sharedInstance: method.

The method naming convention also changed (at least from the examples that I found) to a more specific name, sharedInstance:. This lets us know that it is retrieving an instance of the class and the instance it retrieves will be shared across the application.

There’s also a discussion on stackoverflow that confirms the dispatch_once method is actually a replacement for the @synchronized idiom, and may offer some added value from a short read.

If you care to learn more about dispatch_once I found a blog article that reveals the secrets of dispatch_once. Which was a little bit more than I cared to read about.

Conclusion

After getting all hung up with the proper way to implement a singleton, I stumbled across another article titled Avoid Singleton Abuse, which talks about why using a singleton in general might be a bad idea. He also talks about using dependency injection as a plausible solution to using too many singletons.

He explains that in most cases even though when we are starting the development of our application we tend to believe, “Oh I will only ever have one instance of this object,” a lot of the times we update our applications in ways that prove us wrong. So it’s important to realize that a singleton is a global scope in sheep’s clothing. Be aware that it will create application states that will have to be maintained if there is ever a change to the behavior of that application.

After sifting through those last two blog posts I came to the conclusion that I could have probably better resolved my original issue with the use of DI by injecting through a constructor, and I will probably be looking to update this code in the near future.

5 Things I Wish I Knew About When I Started iOS Development

2014-10-29T00:00:00-05:00

There are 5 things I really wish I knew about when I started ios development. If you’re just getting into it now, I think it will help. So let’s jump in.

1. Constraints, Constraints, Constraints!

Constraints are a very important aspect of Objective-C programming as far as GUI is concerned. They allow you to position and size the elements—known as views—on the screen. This is an extremely painful to understand topic when you are first getting to know it.

There are multiple ways of making constraints. For learning purposes I recommend using Interface Builder to play around with them this will give you the quickest, most interactive/visual way to understand how constraints behave.

If you are applying constraints programmatically and running into issues, I always recommend to keep a scrap constraints project available and use it to reenact or stage the same issues you are experiencing with your constraints in code. This will give you a more visual way to troubleshoot them.

With the coming of iOS 8 there is a new debugger tool for constraints that can be used as well, but it only works when you are running the simulator for iOS 8 or higher, so if you’re targeting iOS 7 still it won’t help for much.

If you are creating constraints programmatically you should also have a quick read through LEARN TO LOVE AUTO LAYOUT… PROGRAMMATICALLY. It will teach you VFL. If you can understand VFL, then you will gain a better understanding from the output window when your app is suddenly “Unable to simultaneously satisfy constraints:”

Unable to simultaneously satisfy constraints.
	Probably at least one of the constraints in the following list is one you don't want. Try this: (1) look at each constraint and try to figure out which you don't expect; (2) find the code that added the unwanted constraint or constraints and fix it. (Note: If you're seeing NSAutoresizingMaskLayoutConstraints that you don't understand, refer to the documentation for the UIView property translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints) 
(
    "<NSLayoutConstraint:0x7f9cf2e5bdf0 V:[UIButton:0x7f9cf2e60090(30)]>",
    "<NSLayoutConstraint:0x7f9cf2c8d5d0 V:[UIView:0x7f9cf2c8d620(30)]>",
    "<NSLayoutConstraint:0x7f9cf2c8d8f0 V:|-(0)-[UIButton:0x7f9cf2e60090]   (Names: '|':UIView:0x7f9cf2c8d620 )>",
    "<NSLayoutConstraint:0x7f9cf2c8d990 V:[UICollectionView:0x7f9cf4861000]-(0)-|   (Names: '|':UIView:0x7f9cf2c8d620 )>",
    "<NSLayoutConstraint:0x7f9cf2c8d9e0 V:[UIButton:0x7f9cf2e60090]-(2)-[UICollectionView:0x7f9cf4861000]>"
)

Will attempt to recover by breaking constraint 
<NSLayoutConstraint:0x7f9cf2e5bdf0 V:[UIButton:0x7f9cf2e60090(30)]>

2. Use Simpler, Modern Objective-C Syntax

Use Modern Objective-C wherever possible. This includes cleaning up a lot of horrible readability issues with subscripting and literals, but also addresses management of class properties using the @property keyword.

Subscripting

before

NSDictionary* profile = [[[self.data objectForKey:@"profiles"] objectForKey:@"profile"] objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];

after

NSDictionary* profile = self.data[@"profiles"][@"profile"][indexPath.row];

If you don’t want to convert your project manually Xcode provides a refactoring tool for this that will run over your whole project (Edit > Refactor > Convert to Modern Objective-C Syntax…).

Literals

before

[Flurry
  logEvent:@"Purchase Intend"
  withParameters: [NSDictionary
    dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:productId,
    @"id",
    [Util getDeviceId],
    @"deviceId", nil]
];

after

[Flurry
  logEvent:@"Purchase Intend"
  withParameters: @{
    @"id" : productId,
    @"deviceId" : [Util getDeviceId]}
];

before

[GALog LogEvent:@"history"
     withAction:@"profile"
      withValue:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:indexPath.row]];

after

[GALog LogEvent:@"history"
         withAction:@"clear"
          withValue:@(indexPath.row)];

3. Use @property where applicable

This is still technically a part of modern objective-c, but I felt it was important enough to call it out as a separate bulletpoint.

It’s important to understand that @property is just a way to automatically generate a setter, getter, and an ivar and that these things are named based on convention.

When I started I had no idea that implementing a method called setId:, which accepts an NSString would allow me to use object.id = @"something" in addition to the more obvious, [object setId:@"something"];

Here’s my short example:

before

Person.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface Person : NSObject

- (void)setName:(NSString *)name;
- (NSString *)name;

@end

Person.m

#import "Person.h"

@implementation Person
{
    NSString *_name;
}

- (NSString *)name
{
    return _name;
}

- (void)setName:(NSString *)name
{
    _name = name;
}

@end

implementation

Person *bob = [Person new];
[bob setName:@"Bob"];
NSLog(@"Name: %@", [bob name]); //prints Name: Bob

Person *jill = [Person new];
jill.name = @"Jill";
NSLog(@"Name: %@", jill.name); //prints: Name: Jill

//both of these work with same class implementation

after

Person.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface Person : NSObject
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *name;
@end

Person.m

#import "Person.h"

@implementation Person

@end

implementation

Person *bob = [Person new];
[bob setName:@"Bob"];
NSLog(@"Name: %@", [bob name]); //prints Name: Bob

Person *jill = [Person new];
jill.name = @"Jill";
NSLog(@"Name: %@", jill.name); //prints: Name: Jill

//same code, still works both ways

Side note

It should also be noted that since @property is generating iVars, the private variable _name can still be accessed using _name. However, when using self.name (from within the Person class) we are actually making a call to the name method to retrieve our name and the setName: method to assign the value, instead of retrieving/assigning them directly.

4. Advanced Breakpoints

Xcode has a lot of shortcomings, there are lots of things that I hate about it—and I do complain daily—however, discovering some of the debugger’s power has me seeing Xcode in a slightly different light.

Using the Xcode breakpoints you can inspect or even inject values in your code and allow the application to continue over that breakpoint automatically. This allows easier testing for different values and gives you a really nice tool for debugging weird issues in your app. Use it.

Create a breakpoint
Right Click > Edit Breakpoint…
Add action
Then check Automatically continue after evaluating actions

5. VIPER

VIPER is an iOS application architecture that will help you get better organized for large projects and teams.

I’m not going to preach to everyone and say that you absolutely must incorporate VIPER and strictly adhere to their guidelines for all of your projects, but I do believe that giving the article a thorough read—or two or three—will change the way you think about iOS programming when it comes to architecting your apps.

Again, the main point here is not to use VIPER, necessarily, but to spark your own creativity and help break you free from the ubiquitous Massive View Controller that they mention early on in the article. Just because iOS is using a “ViewController” as a core mechanism does not necessarily tie you to implementing both functionalities (view and controller) in the same place.

Help! My iPhone Contacts Won't Sync!

2014-06-26T00:00:00-05:00

Today I installed iOS 8 beta 2. After installing, my contacts were gone and absolutely refused to sync from the Exchange account I had set up for my gmail.

I’m going to teach you how to fix the sync issue and a bunch of other tricks I picked up along the way.

#The Fix

In Settings > General > Mail, Contacts, Calendar select Add an Account…
Select other

3 Select Add CardDAV Account.
Enter google.com for the server.
and your full gmail email address as the User Name
Follow the remaining steps (if any, I don’t remember exactly) and your contacts should start to sync immediately.

Doing this also unlocks a new Default Account option in the Contacts section of the Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen for the account that you just created.

I’m still trying to figure out if it’s possiblet to sync to both Gmail and iCloud at the same time, but right now I’m unsure.

#Neat tricks What I did find out though, is that if you log into your gmail at gmail.com.

Select Contacts from the Gmail menu.
You will be able to select More > Export …
and export to a format that iContact will understand and import that using your Mac’s Contacts app!

いいね？！ Pretty sweet, huh?

Homebrew Packages Not Found After Upgrading OS X

2014-06-10T00:00:00-05:00

Today at work I ran into a really irritating issue. None of my installed homebrew packages were found and when I tried to install them again using brew install it told me they were already installed. My paths all checked out fine and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was.

Then I realized that this all happened after upgrading OS X.

#How to fix a broken homebrew install after upgrading OS X

The trick to fixing homebrew after upgrading OS X is a script I found in this stackexchange post:

#!/bin/bash
FORMULAS=(`brew list`);
for FORMULA in "${FORMULAS[@]}"
do 
    echo "brew unlink $FORMULA" && echo "brew link $FORMULA";
    OUTPUT=`brew unlink $FORMULA`;
    echo $OUTPUT;
    OUTPUT=`brew link $FORMULA`;
    echo $OUTPUT;
done

This solved the issue for me, and if that doesn’t work it was suggested to uninstall and reinstall all packages using the following:

brew list > brew-list.txt
brew uninstall < `cat brew-list.txt`
brew install < `cat brew-list.txt`

Which appears way more time consuming, so I would only use that as a last resort.

XCode Opens Storyboard as XML

2014-06-03T00:00:00-05:00

If you’ve just run into a problem where your storyboard or UI files in XCode open in a code editor it can be tedious to figure out what the problem is.

The first time this happened to me I was getting compiler warnings on my storyboard file, and I thought this was causing the problem. As it turns out–that had nothing to do with it. I don’t know what triggered this to be the default behavior but the solution is easier than it seems.

Just Right-Click your storyboard in the Project Naviator and click Open As… > Interface Builder - iOS Storyboard:

Preparing for iOS Development

2014-06-01T00:00:00-05:00

Soon I’ll begin blogging more and more about iOS development. I hate XCode. Here are a few things to help get us started:

XVim

If you’re an absolute vim addict, such as myself, then pretty much everything you do on your computer is goverened by hjlk.

XVim is an XCode plugin that will bring vim keybindings to your XCode. This helps make things a little bit more bearable for me. I still have other issues with XCode, like the way that XCode’s interface seems to randomly change itself based on what you’re doing to “accommodate” you better, but this helps ease the pain a little… for me :)

Follow the directions to install:

download the code
change the target

XVim will build itself into the appropriate location. You may have to restart XCode after.

If you get an error like:

error: garbage collection is no longer supported

Then you are probably trying to compile the XCode 4 version on XCode 5. Make sure to switch the build target. Also make sure to click Edit Schemes... and select Release

Color Themes

Another important aspect for me to start coding is having a color theme that’s easy on my eyes. I hate Visual Studio in the same way I don’t like most IDEs. But one thing I do like about Visual Studio is the Obsidian color theme. Because I did a little research before I already knew there was one available for XCode. You can grab the Obsidian XCode Theme from a GitHub gist. If you’re on XCode 4+ (which you probably should be if you’re reading this now) you can use this magic one-liner to install it (I’m gonna love myself for this later!):

mkdir -p ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/UserData/FontAndColorThemes \
  && cd $_ \
  && curl -O https://gist.githubusercontent.com/subdigital/837656/raw/9a97509e573b2ad9cbb3e48a1e56f6fdf5bb1c49/ObsidianCode.dvtcolortheme

The font’s a little too big for me (Menlo 18pt) so I change the font size to 10pt and disable antialiasing from OS X on fonts under that size. Right now, I’m not sure how to disable the antialiasing on Retina displays (or if it’s even possible) but from what I remember, this should handle it on non-retina displays:

defaults write com.apple.dt.Xcode NSFontDefaultScreenFontSubstitutionEnabled -bool YES

Hex ColorPicker

The Hex ColorPicker is an extension to the built in OS X color picker and it will allow you to enter a hex value on any color picker. It’s very useful in XCode if you are using the interface builder at all and makes creating custom color palettes easier in OS X as well.

To install, copy the HexColorPicker.colorPicker to your ~/Library/ColorPickers directory. If it doesn’t exist, create it.

After that you might have to restart any applications you want to have the color picker available in.

Tips for Development

CMD + Shift + O

CMD + Shift + O. This keyboard shortcut will open any file or symbol in the current project or workspace, just start typing the name and it will come up. Pressing enter* will open the file. Pressing **alt + enter will open the file in a split pane (but always on the Assistant Panel).

Swapping Capslock and Ctrl keys

Something I recommend to anyone developing on any platform is to swap your CTRL and Capslock keys. Is there any time you really even need the capslock key? I know I never use it.

Some keyboards (like WASDKeyboards and Ducky) have dip switches underneath to toggle functionality of these keys on/off and swap them. This is the best way to assign Capslock to CTRL, but of course it’s not the only way. OS X also allows you to change this yourself from System Preferences.

Under System Preferences > Keyboard select *Modifier Keys… and swap to your heart’s desire:

Open Random File Command Line Osx

2014-04-20T00:00:00-05:00

Ever want to select a random file on the command line? Or just randomize anything? Well it’s possible using shuf.

We can use the shuf command to shuffle any input from stdin. Use

ls | shuf -n1

to pull a random file. The -n1 switch tells shuf to select only the first file. Without it you’ll get a totally randomized list of the entire directory. Neat!

Background

shuf is a utility from GNU coreutils. It should be available out of the box on any regular linux install, but for OS X you will have to take an extra step.

OS X

On OS X, coreutils can be installed on the commandline using homebrew:

brew install coreutils

Important Note for OSX

Now that coreutils is installed you can call each coreutils application by its prefixed name, just add a g in front:

ls | gshuf -n1

Chain it

You can use the output of this command to send it to other applications. For example, on OS X we can use the open command to actually open the random file we’ve selected:

open $(ls | gshuf -n1)

Gurai VS. Goro: The Final Showdown

2014-03-22T00:00:00-05:00

Most of my Japanese I've picked up simply from talking to native speakers in Japanese. Asking them to repeat themselves a few hundred times, texting on "LINE":http://line.me/en/ and using my favorite iPhone Japanese Dictionary "imiwa?":https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imiwa-japanese-dictionary/id288499125?mt=8. One thing I picked up rather quickly was the use of くらい or ぐらい, which means "about" as in an approximation. For example if I was talking to a friend about going to the mall or a movie and they asked me how far it is I could tell them, bq. 車で１５分ぐらい。
"By car, about 15 minutes."" For a while I was also misusing くらい or ぐらい when telling that something will happen at _around_ a certain time. For example if someone asked: bq. パーティーは何時ですか？
"What time is the party?" I might answer: bq. 午後８時ぐらい。
"Around 8PM" Finally corrected me and told me that ぐらい or くらい with a specific time is a no-no. Instead I should use ころ or ごろ in the same way, but I was understood. So when a friend asks bq. イベントは何時？
"What time is the event?" You should answer with ころ・ごろ: bq. ８時ごろ h2. Conclusion Even though I was understood using the wrong word, it's probably a better idea to get it straight in my head. So you can use this small cheat sheet to help: |_.日本語|_.When to use|_.Example| |ころ・ごろ|use with specific time|パーティー何時ですか？
*８時ごろです*| |くらい・ぐらい|use with a _duration_ of time.|日本語はどのくらい勉強しますか？
*２年くらい*|

Going Angular

2014-03-19T00:00:00-05:00

Lately at work I've been doing a lot of research and not a lot of blogging. I am going to make an attempt over the course of the next few days to update my blog to reflect the massive amount of new stuff my brain has absorbed over the past few weeks. h2. Background The first thing I want to touch on is javascript. Our current mobile application is on the Apple App Store and the Android Market. What most people don't realize is that 90% of our code is javascript and html. 90% being a number solely fabricated in my mind, but I assure you the guts of the app is in fact JS, HTML and CSS. This can be accomplished with the help of projects like "Cordova":https://cordova.apache.org/ and "PhoneGap":http://phonegap.com/ I won't go into detail to explain how these products work or how they are different, since the focus here is on the JS side. We had a very loose code base that was mostly hand-written from scratch with the help of some mobile libraries like "iScroll":http://cubiq.org/iscroll-5 and "Intel's App Framework":http://app-framework-software.intel.com/, which continues to get better and better. Our application is very data-driven and so it completely centers around grabbing information from web services and displaying it to the users. The javascript code was a little bit sloppy since it was originally written very quickly, with many rewrites of huge chunks of the code, and not much refactoring was done. There was no unit testing or any way to check for broken code when big changes were made. This was gradually slowing us down over time. This combined with a poor code organization and overall bad practices left me craving for some kind of structure so I went on a one-week journey to explore alternative, _structured_ solutions: javascript frameworks. h2. Possible solutions I won't go into detail about all of what I found but it all led to a showdown between "AngularJS":http://angularjs.org/ and "Backbone.js":http://backbonejs.org/. We chose Angular. If you want to see about other options check out "TodoMVC":http://todomvc.com/, a site dedicated to writing a todo app using javascript MVC libraries. h2. Why Angular? We chose angular _because_ the application was so heavily dependent on web services and Angular made this a breeze. In addition to the awesome support by Google and the rest of the community, the dependency injection and what appeared to be a wide enough adoption rate. AngularJS provides a lot of free functionality, and often times there is a solution available to common problems in the form of a community contributed AngularJS plugin. Some examples of AngularJS plugins: * Slide-In menus for mobile are possible using "angular-snap":https://github.com/jtrussell/angular-snap.js, an AngularJS wrapper to "Snap.js":https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js. * Mobile device touch gestures are possible with "angular-gestures":https://github.com/wzr1337/angular-gestures, an AngularJS wrapper for "Hammer.js":http://eightmedia.github.io/hammer.js/ h2. Angularing So AngularJS by itself can be used just like a library, but like I said I was craving structure so I hunted around and found a couple of solutions. h3. angular-seed AngularJS references the "angular-seed":https://github.com/angular/angular-seed project in their documentation. They created it and it is highly recommended (by them). I created our first prototype using angular-seed. It was great but there were a few things I didn't like about it. Here's a list of what I liked and hated: h4. Cons * Initial setup requires editing multiple files * Default controller/services/filters/directives separation is hairy * No build process h5. Initial set up requires editing multiple files Multiple files need to be edited for the initial set up (things like your project name and the module names and so on) h5. Default set up for controllers and services is hairy The default configuration puts all controllers into a single @controllers.js@ file. The same thing is done for @directives@, @filters@, and @services@. They claim this is because most applications are small enough to pull this off. I call bullshit. I think it's sloppy and I don't like it. Of course you're not locked into using that style, but separating things out _is_ an extra step, after all. h5. There is no build process I forgot to mention before that I was looking to have a build process. The type of thing that would allow me to lint my code, check it for errors, minify it and compress it, and have everything set for deployment. This isn't really a problem with AngularJS, it's just that out of the box it is missing. h4. Pros * Project skeleton organizes everything for you (it's pretty well organized) * Fast kick start to your project * Works out of the box * Comes with sample unit tests out of the box! I won't go into details about the pros --- but trust me, it's good! (Even though I did complain about it) h3. Yeoman Building with Yeoman is another option, but requires a lot of dependencies (on the development side). So what is Yeoman? "Yeoman":http://yeoman.io/ is a "web scaffolding tool." Fancy mambo-jumbo aside, Yeoman is a project creation tool. It will create your project and help you manage it. It is a commandline tool so you cli junkies are gonna love it (_probably_). Yeoman uses several other tools, namely "Grunt":http://gruntjs.com/ and "Bower":http://bower.io/ to give you a full development work flow. If you are unfamiliar with these, let me give you a quick introduction. *Grunt* is a build tool, you can think of Grunt as the GNU @make@ of javascript. *Bower* is a package manager. It will download packages for you, tracing their dependencies, and dump them out on to your filesystem in a directory (default is @bower_components/@). Here's a quick guide I found to "Automate AngularJS With Yeoman, Grunt & Bower":http://newtriks.com/2013/06/11/automating-angularjs-with-yeoman-grunt-and-bower/, it's not my favorite but I can't find the link that I liked best at this time. h4. Cons * You have to install A LOT OF STUFF to get started * Learning what tools serve what purpose and how to use them * The default linter is @jshint@ (I prefer @gjslint@ for maximum control: you can suppress any linter message you want) * The template code style might not agree with your linter out of the box h4. Pros * Handles project creation (adding controllers, models, etc is all automated) * Has a build process (minifies your code and automatically makes appropriate replacements for you in your files) h2. Conclusion AngularJS is awesome, how you implement it is up to you. I don't have too much experience yet with the Yeoman method since I didn't find it until after prototyping using angular-seed. However, I do have a lot of faith that Yeoman is a good solution and I like the way it handles things for you. Next time I will try to publish some guide of my own with some sample code. I've also started learning objective-c and I will start posting on that as well.

What's Your Major?

2014-03-18T00:00:00-05:00

Journaling In Japanese, Day 1

2014-03-04T00:00:00-06:00

Somewhat inspired by my Japanese teacher’s request for me to write down (preferably on paper, with my own two hands) a journal entry—one sentence for each day of the week—I’ve decided to do it on the internet instead (where I don’t actually have to write anything).

I know, I know. It kind of defeats the purpose of practicing hiragana, etc. but I think it may prove to be a little more valuable especially since I’m planning to write more than just one sentence—as proposed by the original idea.

I will call it… Journaling in Japanese! Or JiJ! Or… because that sounds horrible I’ll call it Jiji—it’s cute and rolls off the tongue. Also according to my [dictionary] Jiji (時事) also means “events of the day” or “current affairs,” which is also irocinally suiting.

My current level of Japanese is somewhat baby-level, so I will be mostly speaking informally with no clue how to properly construct my sentences. Constructive criticism is allowed here.

とにかく、行くぜ！今日会社に行った。昼休みで帰って、ご飯食べた。ふぅーん、これはちょっと変と思うね。時事が多分詰まらない。めんどくさい。

会社で新しいPackage Managerを見つけた！やってみたいよ！名前はYeomanだよ！今やってみる〜

じゃね〜

5 Easy Steps to Writing Better Code

2014-02-15T00:00:00-06:00

I’ve seen a lot of bad code written before. This is partially because I’ve written a lot of bad code myself in the past (and for that matter, I still do sometimes). The first step to solving any problem is to admit that you have one. This means you need to recognize bad code when you see it. Here is a list of some serious coding mistakes that I see time and time again.

1. Don’t copy and paste!

I get a lot of pushback on this from everyone, but I feel really strongly about it.

While copy and paste is great for moving things around, it causes problems, too. Like duplicating existing code where normally you could use a function or a loop to accomplish the same task or creating 5 copies of the same function that each have only one line of code that separates them from their bretheren.

You should re-type the code by hand instead. This seems to involve more effort (especially if your typing skills are not up to par) but it will also help you find issues in your code faster, since it gives you more time to think about what you are writing.

By using copy and paste you are distancing yourself from the meaning of the code and its existing design problems. By typing it out again your brain has to process everything you are writing and you might jump up and say to youself, “wait… why am I doing this again? This is way too much work…” where as if you had copy and pasted it you would not notice.

2. Avoid vague or non-descriptive variable and function names

It is very crucial to have meaningful variable names. I find myself getting confused every day at work because of variable names that have no meaning. Remember that what makes sense to you at the time may not make sense to the rest of your team. It might also not make sense to you later. It does make the naming situation a little more challenging.

Taking the time to clearly think about the name of a variable could save you and your team hours when trying to debug code later on.

In the past I have even done this to myself. I will pick a name for a variable, put the code down and come back to it months later and then try to use the same variable to do something completely different than what it was intended for—just because the name was suggesting something else.

This is such an important topic that I will provide some examples of bad variable names. These are taken from real production code.

superAddressBookList
superRelativesList
result
data
pid
obj

data, pid and obj are probably ubiquitous in the programming realm but I am going to tell you exactly why I hate them. data can mean anything. Everything is data. You might as well name your variable everything. Because as far as I’m concerned, that’s what’s in it.

The same goes for obj. I’m assuming obj is an object, but what kind of object? Give me a little more information about what to expect from this object and how I can use it. Even something like personObject or animalObject sounds better to me. Although my ears still twitch every time I hear the word “object” being used, I guess that’s what you might call a personal problem.

I don’t like pid because while the id part is likely not a Freudian reference the letter p could stand for anything. This variable could be storing the process id of a thread, or a product id (in an eccomerce situation) or even a purchase id. God forbid there’s a purchase id and a product id! Then what do we do? pid1 and pid2? Don’t be lazy. Type. If you are working in the field as a software engineer I have earth shattering news for you: you are being paid to type.

Here are some function names that also don’t make any sense:

void dataLoadToPage()
void sendDataToPage()
void supportTabActive()

I’m still not sure how the first two are different

supprtTabActive based on the name might be a boolean function, or it might be a void function that activates the support tab.

This is one is a really good example loop that I found:

$.each(function(bi, people) {
    //code does something in here
});

Seeing the word “bi” and “people” next to one another in code makes me wonder what’s really going on in that loop.

3. Review Your Code

Seriously. Take a break after you’ve gotten your stuff to work and re-read what you’ve written. If you have someone else you can pull in to review your code with you, that’s even better. They will help point out certain things that you might not see since your eyes have become accustomed to the code.

Sometimes finding a problem with your code is like trying to find those misplaced car keys. You know you put them on your desk somewhere but since you know the layout of your desk so well there are certain places your brain will rule out searching automatically; those are precisely the places you need to be looking.

4. Be Consistent

Adopt a consistent style of coding. Things like tabs vs spaces, how many tabs, when to indent, which lines to place the opening and closing brackets on, etc. Also be careful when naming your variables. If you are using camelCase or under_scores or CAPS_AND_UNDER_SCORES. Remember that just because you use camelCase for your local variables doesn’t mean that you should rule out using CAPS_AND_UNDER_SCORES for constants, for example (or something like that).

5. Pay Attention To Logic

Watch out for setting variables and conditions and then repeating the exact same code unconditionally. I’ve seen a lot of code that looks something like this:

if (weWantToHaveFun) {
    getBeer();
    throwAParty();
    fireLaserBeams();
}
else if (weWantToHaveFunWithoutBeer) {
    throwAParty();
    fireLaserBeams();
}
else {
    fireLaserBeams();
}

In this code, we fire laser beams no matter what. It would be smarter to pull that line outside of the if statements entirely. Also notice that you are repeating the code (fireLaserBeams()) 3 times.

MySQL Dump/Restore With Progress Indicator

2013-06-06T00:00:00-05:00

Today I just found out about a great utility called bar. bar shows a progress indicator on the command line.

Bar can be installed via homebrew on os x:

brew install bar

I don’t know the exact syntax for the command, I only have my working examples to show… The help message isn’t too helpful and I don’t seem to have any man pages available.

Here’s a sample of what it looks like:

#!/bin/bash

# where local_db and remote_db are strings with mysql args and tmpfile is created via mktemp
echo 'Dumping database...'
mysqldump $local_db | bar > $tmpfile
echo 'Restoring database to production...'
bar $tmpfile | mysql $remote_db

And the output looks like this:

Dumping database...
      100% [==============================================================]
Restoring database to production...
      100% [==============================================================]

There also another tool called pv which stands for pipe viewer I’m currently trying to work out how to use that tool so I can use it instead. It seems to be more common, documented and feature-rich.

Rake - Command failed with status (127)

2013-06-06T00:00:00-05:00

So today I got this annoying message from rake that I have seen way too many times. It looks something like the following:

$ rake updb
scripts/updb.sh
rake aborted!
Command failed with status (127): [./scripts/updb.sh...]
/path/to/Rakefile:16:in `block in <top (required)>'
Tasks: TOP => updb
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

Status 127 is code for “command not found.” The problem was caused by my Rakefile which had a task called “updb” which I use to upload the current local copy of a database to production. And it looks like this:

desc 'Uploads database to production'
task :updb do
  sh './scripts/updb.sh'
end

The problem here is that even though the script is set to be executable, it’s still not in $PATH and even though ./scripts/updb.sh will actually run on the command line, we need to specify the shell to run and pass the script as an argument. The working task now looks like this:

desc 'Uploads database to production'
task :updb do
  sh 'sh scripts/updb.sh'
end

If you run into the same issue:

try double checking that the command you are running is in your $PATH and that it is actually a command.
If the command is not in your path, either move it there or use the full path name to it. You can make this cleaner by using a variable to store the path to the command.
Call any scripts using their respective interpreters and pass the file names as arguments.

Adding Videos

2013-06-02T00:00:00-05:00

Hey all, I haven’t been updating too much recently so I wanted to drop you a line and let you know what’s going on.

I am starting to design some new sections of the site, since for a long time I really haven’t given the site any thought for design at all. I will be slowly adding some videos to a new videos section that I am working on; you will see them appear on the home page. I am adding them in the dates they were originally published which unfortunately means having some back dated posts.

I am going to try and tag them all with the videos tag, so you should be able to find them through there until the actual design of the videos page is completed.

I am also working on a profile page for the authors of this site (which currently is just myself). It will have detailed information about me with resources to my twitch.tv stream and list all of my videos and posts. It will probably take me a while to design it and implement it so please be patient!

I hope it turns out ok :3

Sick And Sad Guitar Cover

2013-05-31T00:00:00-05:00

Here is a cover of me playing Sick and Sad (Original Song by Catch 22)

Hearing Japanese - Kaichou wa Maid-sama!

2013-05-30T00:00:00-05:00

Ah! Sorry I have not been keeping up with my studious ways. My Japanese P.I.C. (that's partner-in-crime, or in normal people speak my "study buddy") has been largely unavailable so I haven't been doing anything much in the line of studying. But I will try to get back on the wagon again (is it _on_ the wagon, or _off_ the wagon? I can never remember). Kaichou wa Maid-sama (wiki) is the next anime I started watching after Magi. It's a school-life shoujo type romantic comedy (I guess) about a girl who attends a mostly rufian-boy high school. She is the class president but she has a little secret... She works in a Maid cafe as a waitress! One of her fellow students, a lady killer named Osui, decides to keep this little secret for himself in order to try and make her his personal maid for a day. I'll try to organize them by episode... I only started doing that as of Episode 4 however, so 1-3 will be clumped together. As of this writing I'm on episode 20 something and I stopped taking notes at episode 10. Woops. h1. Episodes 1-3 h2. Vocabulary List table(vocab). |_.What I thought I heard|_{width: 150px}.What I actually heard|_.Meaning| |seita kaichou|せいとう　かいちょう|Class President| |futsu|ふつう|general; ordinary; usual; normal| |mendokuse|めんどうくさい
面倒くさい|troublesome, bothersome, tiresome.
めんどう means "trouble" or "difficulty"| |shinsengumi|しんせんぐみ
新選組|Shinsengumi was a shogunate police and military force located in Kyoto dedicated to suppressing anti-shogunate activities during the Edo period.

I've seen it commonly referenced in anime so I decided to research.| |zaken|ざけん
ざけんなよ
ざけんじゃねーよ|(vulgar) fuck you!
don't fuck with me!
don't fuck around!
don't be a screw off!| |ni ku ni|2-2|く means section; district; ward.
Ni Ku Ni refers to the class 2 section 2... Or something like that.| |touzen|とうぜん|natural; as a matter of course| |sentai|せんたい
戦隊|Squadron| |moe|もえ
萌え|(_Manga Slang_) crush; fascination; infatuation
_Don't laugh I really didn't know this one!_| |seigan|せいがん
請願
正眼|Not sure which definition was the right one here
petition;
aiming at the eye (with a sword)

It could have been either one, I don't remember the episode clearly and since shinsengumi was mentioned the swordplay is a possibility| |doshitan|どうしたん|What's the matter?; what's wrong?| |tsundere|つんでれ|being sharp and sarcastic (tsuntsun) on the surface, but being lovestruck and fawning (deredere) underneath. This is a personality type commonly acted out.| |bikkuri|びっくり|(_suru verb_) to be astonished; surprised; amazed; frightened| h2. Phrases bq. じつはかくれるオタクなんだか Jitsu wa kakureru otaku nandaka |_.word|_.meaning| |じつ|(_expr_) To be honest;
to tell you the truth| |かくれる
隠れる|to hide; to be hidden; to conceal oneself; to disappear| |なんだか
何だか|(a) little; somewhat; somehow| My translation: bq. To tell you the truth, I'm a bit of a closet otaku.

The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past Episode 01 - Rescue Zelda

2013-05-17T00:00:00-05:00

Here is the first episode of my first-ever video game playthrough. The Game is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for SNES. Hope you all enjoy it!

Hearing Japanese - Magi, Part 2

2013-05-12T00:00:00-05:00

I finished up watching the Magi anime a few days ago and took some more notes. Here they are: h2. Vocabulary List: table(vocab). |_.What I thought I heard|_.What I actually heard|_.Meaning| |yatsura|やつら
奴ら|those guys| |shikashi|しかし|However; but| |nakimishiku|なきみそくん
泣き味噌くん
なきむしくん
泣き虫くん|なきみそ *なきむし* means "crybaby" * Updated 2013.05.20| |mochiron|もちろん|of course| |yuuki|ゆうき
勇気|bravery; courage; valor| |suma wa|すまは|corner; nook; recess -- _this one I don't exactly remember_| h2. Phrases I also heard one phrase I decided to translate: bq. それはきっとある sore wa kitto aru |_.word|_.meaning| |きっと| surely; undoubtedly; most likely| |ある| to be (for inanimate objects); "to happen"| The translation I came up with for this was: bq. It will surely happen. So I'm hoping it's accurate :) _Side note: I will also be utilizing "textile":http://redcloth.org/hobix.com/textile/ for these posts going forward, since tables are quicker to create than in HTML. I'm also dropping out the romaji except for the "what I thought I heard." This is because I write them down quickly as I hear them and I'm not as fast at writing the kana just yet. I will post a good kana reference later for those who are unsure. Essentially I'm forcing you to learn it one way or another--It's good practice, I promise;_

Change Date Modified On A File Osx

2013-05-11T00:00:00-05:00

In order to test some file based caching I designed in PHP the other day I had to expire one of my cache files by making it older than 1 day.

To do that I used touch -mt:

touch -mt 201305100419 sekkzpekk.json

Briefly from the man page:

-m      Change the modification time of the file.

-t      Change the access and modification times to the specified time instead of the current time of day.  The argument is of the form ``[[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]'' where each pair of letters represents
the following:

    CC      The first two digits of the year (the century).
    YY      The second two digits of the year.  If ``YY'' is specified, but ``CC'' is not, a value for ``YY'' between 69 and 99 results in a ``CC'' value of 19.  Otherwise, a ``CC'' value of
           20 is used.
    MM      The month of the year, from 01 to 12.
    DD      the day of the month, from 01 to 31.
    hh      The hour of the day, from 00 to 23.
    mm      The minute of the hour, from 00 to 59.
    SS      The second of the minute, from 00 to 61.

 If the ``CC'' and ``YY'' letter pairs are not specified, the values default to the current year.  If the ``SS'' letter pair is not specified, the value defaults to 0.

Originally spotted on Danilo Stern-Sapad’s blog

Creating A Keyboard Shortcut In Sublime To Open Specific Files

2013-05-10T00:00:00-05:00

Today I figured out how to create a keyboard shortcut to open a specific file in Sublime Text 2.

This is useful, for example, for hotkeying my MAMP apache vhosts file—a file I commonly edit.

Add the following to your user keybindings file in sublime to set the F1 Key to open the MAMP vhosts file:

{ "keys": ["f1"], "command": "open_file", "args": {"file": "/Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf"} },

Change the keys and filenames to fit your needs.

Japanese Section Launched!

2013-05-09T00:00:00-05:00

Despite the fact that I did start writing articles yesterday tonight is the actual night I am launching the content, since I had to do quite a bit of work to figure out how I wanted the pages to be formatted.

The basic idea is that going forward I will be taking notes while listening to japanaese music, watching anime or interacting with any other japanese content in any way. This way I can really take a minute to break down and process everything I’ve heard or been subjected to and analyze it, learn from it, and share it with everyone else.

I am hoping it will also bring back some more relevant “otaku” content to a site whose original purpose may have been long forgotten :)

Check out the first article: Hearing Japanese - Magi.

Hearing Japanese - Magi

2013-05-08T00:00:00-05:00

Today I started studying Japanese together with a friend. We both had studied separately and decided to brush up on our japanese.

In addition to going through my beginner textbook, Japanese for Busy People, I decided that I would augment my studying by watching excessive amounts of anime, listening really carefully to the dialog and taking notes.

Today is the first day of my notes so I don’t know how the format will turn out but hopefully I get this down to something practical.

One of my goals in doing this is to track my progress as well as having a set of notes to look back on

Today’s vocabulary list comes from an anime called Magi

What I thought I heard	What I really heard	Meaning
tatoe tatoeba	tatoe (たとえ) tatoeba (たとえば)	Tatoe means "however", "example". The expression tatoeba means "for example"
tonikaku	tonikaku とにかく	Anyway generally speaking
soueba? soyeba?	soieba そういえば	Come to think of it... Now that you mention it...
nanda koko wa	nanda koko wa なんだここは	Nanda is an interjection meaning "what"
hachimitsu	hachimitsu はちみつ	Honey Note: Hachi (はち) means bee. Mitsu (みつ) means nectar.
Koko ni iru wa zenbu Toran no muran ningen tachi sa	Koko ni iru wa zenbu Toran no munou ningen tachi sa ここにいるはぜんぶToranのむのうにんげんたちさ	Here are all the incompetent humans of Toran
Nante hidoi koto	Nante hidoi koto なんてひどいこと	How cruel (koto - matter, thing or event)
Boku ni mo wakaranai	Boku ni mo wakaranai	I don't understand either (to me, I also don't undertand)
ochitsuke ochitsuite	ochitsuke (おちつけ) ochitsuite (おちついて)	ochitsukeru (おちつける) - to quiet / to calm down I believe ochitsuite is the て form of ochitsukeru
Hitotsu onegai da	Hitotsu onegai da ひとつおねがいだ	One request Hitotsu means "one" Onegai used as a noun means "request"

Adding Keywords From Firefox Address Bar

2013-04-18T00:00:00-05:00

Typically for development I like to use the Firefox keywords feature to get me to where I need to be faster. The irritating part of this is that in order to create a keyword for a site you typically have to first add the bookmark (which can be done quickly using the star icon in the address bar) and then open up the Bookmarks Library Then several clicks later you can add a keyword.

Wouldn’t it be nice to add a Firefox keyword straight from the star icon? Well I found this old blog post that explains how it’s done on Windows. I’ve taken the instructions and converted it for OS X quickly. It still works as of today (2013.04.18).

On the command line, find your Profile Folder for Firefox. This will probably be different for everyone. Mine was in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ there should be another hidden folder (ls -la) in here called something.default. This is your profile folder. The full path to my profile folder was ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/4xw04oq0.default.

Simply copy the following css excerpt:

#editBMPanel_locationRow,
#editBMPanel_keywordRow
{
    visibility: visible !important;
    -moz-box-align: center !important;
}
#editBMPanel_tagsSelector[collapsed="true"]
{
    display: none !important;
}

and in your profile folder execute the following:

mkdir -p chrome/ && pbpaste >> chrome/userChrome.css

This will create the necessary directory if it’s not there and append your CSS snippet to the end of the userChrome.css if it already exists.

Restart Firefox for the changes to apply.

Your star icon should now change from:

to:

* Lifehacker also had an article about this.

WordPress - Programmatically Getting the Latest Post in a Category

2013-04-08T00:00:00-05:00

I’ve seen a lot of solutions for this online but I didn’t really like any of them and they didn’t seem to fit my needs. Here is a function I wrote that you can add to your functions.php in your custom theme which will retreive the latest post in a category when you supply the category id:

<?php
/**
 * Returns the latest post in a category.
 *
 *
 * Quick explanation:
 * ok, the results from WP_Query are stored in an array of WP_Post objects.
 * the "array keys" in WP_Post are actually just attributes, as in:
 * $latest_post->post_content, etc...
 *
 * @param  [int] $category_id category id by number, use get_cat_ID() with the full category name i.e., get_get_ID('My Example Category') to specify category names.
 * @return [WP_Post] object containing post data
 */
function latest_post_in_category($category_id)
{
    $latest_posts = get_posts(array(
        'posts_per_page' => 1,
        'category' => $category_id
    ));

    $return_post = array();
    if (count($latest_posts) > 0) {
        $latest_post = $latest_posts[0];
        return $latest_post;
    }

    return null;
}
?>

The function returns null when no post is found. So you can safely check for nulls.

Here is an example of the function in action. I created another function to pull the latest post from a specific category, by its name:

<?php
function latest_on_demand()
{
    return latest_post_in_category(get_cat_ID('On Demand'));
}
?>

And here’s an example of that function used inside a template:

<?php $latest_post = latest_on_demand() ?>
<?php if (!is_null($latest_post)): ?>
    <?php echo $latest_post->post_content ?>
<?php endif ?>

To get the other attributes of the WP_Post object you can always var_dump($latest_post)

Have fun!

Wordpress 500 Errors, White Screen of Death (WSOD), the Cause and the Cure.

2013-04-04T00:00:00-05:00

Since many of you are probably looking for an immediate solution to the problem I will post my solution first.

#The Cure Let’s dive right in. First thing you should probably do is check your error logs (i.e., your apache error logs). If your error logs aren’t giving you any strong hints then try some of the solutions listed below.

##MySQL - Bad plugins Executing the following SQL statement will disable all plugins. If this fixes your problem, you will be able to log back into Wordpress and enable plugins one by one til you find the issue.

update wp_options set option_value='a:0:{}' where option_name = 'active_plugins';

For me this fixed it. I had my doubts about this working in general, but I tried it anyway and it worked, it turns out that one of my plugins was failing (even though it was working on my previous hosting and my local environment)

Once the plugins have all been disabled via the query above, it is safe to attempt toggling them on one by one, as Wordpress seems to have some sort of built-in security for testing out the modules and disabling them immediately if they cause any errors to occur.

##.htaccess .htaccess is another common offender of 500 errors. You can try disabling the .htaccess file by simply renaming it to something else (i.e., .htaccess-off). If this works, then you have to turn it back on and figure out what’s causing the issue inside of the .htaccess.

When performing a move of a wordpress blog from one server to another I checked my apache logs and noticed that apache was having issues with the RewriteRule directives in my .htaccess file. I got the following message in my error log:

Invalid command 'RewriteRule', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

This was a friendly reminder that I forgot to enable apache’s mod_rewrite. On a default ubuntu server setup you can use the a2enmod utility for enabling apache2 modules:

a2enmod rewrite

##File permissions I’ve also been told that file permissions could be the cause of this. I’m not sure that file permissions had any part in my issues specifically, but clean permissions are always a good idea.

This is especially helpful if you have shell access to your web hosting. A lot of shared hosting companies do provide ssh access, sometimes you have to just submit a special request ticket to support.

Here’s what you want to check:

Proper ownership of files. Files should be owned by the appropriate user for apache. A user like www-data or perhaps your own user name in a shared hosting setup.
Proper file permissions. File permissions can be reset using the find utility:

find /path/to/wordpress -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find /path/to/wordpress -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

The above is a commonly used set of find commands to reset file permissions to their defaults.

#What is WSOD? What’s a 500 Error? I gave a few tips about how to fix the White Screen of Death and the 500 errors, but what are they?

##WSOD. First the WSOD. The White Screen of Death is a common term used on the web to describe when you try to access your site and all you see is a blank white page. This is caused by a combination of different things.

The first part of this problem is that there is an error somewhere in your code. The second part of the problem is that your error reporting is silenced on the front end. Surpressing errors from displaying on your website is recommended for production websites, but it can leave you confused if you don’t know to expect the white screen when something blows up. This same behavior can be seen in almost any web application, not just Wordpress.

If the errors aren’t showing on the frontend—and they shouldn’t in production—the errors will be available via the log files I was talking about earlier. On most linux setups I believe the logs should be in /var/log/apache2/ depending on your configuration, however, the log files could be anywhere.

##500 Error I was poking around the Wordpress forums to see what people were doing to fix 500 errors, and I really couldn’t find anything. For those who do not know, 500 errors typically look like this:

What I did find, however, was a common misconception of what a 500 error is. I believe one person stated it as being the result of exceeding your bandwidth on your web host, which is more than likely not the problem most of the time.In fact, I’m not even sure if that’s possible for it to be the issue.

The bottom line is this: A random error has occurred, it could be anything. It’s usually something to do with the web server—like an apache or php module that has not been enabled or configured properly—or the code that it is running—in our case the PHP code from wordpress or one of its pluginsns.

Letters To You - Guitar Cover

2013-03-12T00:00:00-05:00

Acoustic guitar cover of me playing Letters To You by Finch.

Quickly Showing a Hidden OS X Dock

2013-01-10T00:00:00-06:00

A friend of mine for years has been searching for a way to instantly show his auto-hidden dock, with zero delay. Until he recently discovered the trick to removing the delay and shared it with me I could not understand why he cared so much.

##How to do it To remove the delay from your hidden OS X dock, enter the following on the command line:

defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0 && killall Dock

##Reverting To undo the change and go back to the default auto-hide option with the slight delay, you can just use defaults delete like so:

defaults delete com.apple.Dock autohide-delay && killall Dock

##Conclusion I thought it was pretty useless until I tried it myself. It makes a huge difference. The only down side to it is having the dock show up when I occasionally bump into the screen edge by accident, which isn’t very often at all.

The OSX Daily post referenced above cites an original post from MacWorld.

Creating CSS Sprites for LESS

2013-01-02T00:00:00-06:00

Recently I’ve been working on a project which is using LESS to preprocess its CSS. The mockup design I was given requires image rollovers—which for the sake of having the rollover image ready and loaded—calls for the use of CSS sprites.

##The Problem I’m lazy. Well, not that lazy. Writing the sprite CSS is trivial, but creating the image can be problematic. Creating the original sprite is not too much work, but after subsequent changes maintaining a sprite image costs time and I want automation.

##The Solution The first solution I found is to use Compass, which supports spriting out of the box. Compass is based on SASS and since I’m not using SASS, I don’t consider this an option. I will, however, keep this in mind when starting my next project.

The next option I discovered is SmartSprites which works great on its own, but it requires annotations—CSS comments that resemble the following:

/** sprite-ref: mysprite; */

##The Problem Part II I am using Twitter recess to process my LESS files.

Since they are just comments this shouldn’t be an issue, but for some reason recess seems to be inconsistently removing these comments with no basis for why.

##The Real Solution I decided to do some preprocessing of my own. This solution requires SmartSprites, so go download it now.

I created my own “spec” for a new CSS property that I called background-sprite; it accepts all of the variables that the the annotations from smartsprites would normally use but with a different syntax, which was gracefully accepted by recess. Here’s a sample of the LESS code to do it:

/* First, declare the sprite normally which strangely works without issues */
/** sprite: broadcaster; sprite-image: url('../img/broadcaster-sprite.png'); sprite-layout: vertical; */

.channels li a {
    /* then inside a css rule: */
    background-sprite: url('../img/channel.png') sprite-ref(broadcaster) sprite-alignment(left);
}

Of course this is only half of the problem, because now we need to convert background-sprite properties into background-image properties with the appropriate trailing comment on the same line.

I created a python script (pysprite):

#!/usr/bin/env python

'''
preprocesses less-generated CSS files to convert background-sprite: to
annotated background-image:
'''

import sys
import re

for line in sys.stdin.readlines():
    sprite_regex = r'background-sprite:\s*.+(url\(.+?\)) (.+)'
    match = re.search(sprite_regex, line)
    if match:
        params = match.group(2)
        print 'background-image: %s; /** %s **/' % (
            match.group(1),
            params.replace('(', ': ').replace(')', ';').replace(';;', ';')
        )
    else:
        print line.rstrip()

and a Rakefile:

less_path='path/to/less_files'

desc 'Generates regular CSS (dev mode)'
task :css do
  sh "recess #{less_path}/app.less --compile|pysprite > #{less_path}/../app.css"
  sh "rm webroot/sprite.php"
end

desc 'Generates sprite CSS'
task :sprites do
  sh "recess #{less_path}/app.less --compile|pysprite > #{less_path}/../app.css && smartsprites --root-dir-path #{less_path}/../."
  sh "echo \"<?php \\$app_css = 'app-sprite.css' ?>\" > webroot/sprite.php"
end

to chain everything together. Since I don’t want to manually run rake every time I make changes, I then set my rake css task to run every time I save a LESS file in vim, using the following autocmd:

au BufWritePost *.less silent !rake css

Now since I might not always be using sprites, rather than throwing this autocmd into my vimrc, I set it at runtime from the command line with an edit script I wrote, which sits in my repository root directory, right above the public webroot:

#!/bin/bash
mvim . -c "au BufWritePost *.less silent !rake css"

Note on linux you would change mvim to gvim or just plain vim if you prefer.

You will also notice I create and remove a sprite.php file. I use this file to dynamically set the stylesheet based on the last ran task so that I am not wasting time recreating a sprite image every time I save a file.

This means that during development I use regular image rollovers and when the site is ready for production I just have to run a rake sprites before uploading, which can easily be chained into a deployment process.

##Troubleshooting For everything to work, each one of these scripts needs to be executable (chmod u+x) and in your $PATH.

Getting smartsprites to work outside its own path took a bit of finagling in the smartsprites.sh script:

#!/bin/sh

#
# Add extra JVM options here
#
OPTS="-Xms64m -Xmx256m"

LINKPATH=$(dirname $(which $0))
SCRIPTPATH=$LINKPATH/$(dirname $(readlink $(which $0)))

java $OPTS -Djava.ext.dirs=$SCRIPTPATH/lib org.carrot2.labs.smartsprites.SmartSprites "$@"

Of course the quickest way to fix it if this modification not work is to change the -Djava.ext.dirs= to point to the absolute path of the smartsprites/lib directory.

I also symlinked it to smartsprites (without the “sh”).

##Conclusion It may seem a bit excessive, but with the added simplicity of vim’s autocmd, it becomes a very elegant solution to use, once implemented.

If you are still on the fence about LESS vs SASS and you know there may be image sprites in your future, to keep things straight forward you might want to opt for a SASS and Compass based approach.

Upgrading grep in OS X Revisited

2013-01-02T00:00:00-06:00

Just the other day I realized I was using the OS X stock grep, which was lacking a few features I wanted, some features in particular are the ability to fully color highlight grep results with the --color option, or to exclude directories from searches using the --exclude-dir option.

I was shocked to find one of the first results in google was my own blog from when I previously wrote about this back in March.

Well, the old method for upgrading grep using homebrew no longer works. Luckily I found a post on superuser which describes a new method for upgrading grep via homebrew.

brew tap homebrew/dupes
brew install homebrew/dupes/grep

Note that the new grep will install to /usr/local/bin which usually appears after /usr/bin/ which contains your stock OS X grep, giving priority to the OS X grep.

You can either finagle the paths in your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_rc or do as I did and create a one-off alias for any OS X duplicate software you’ve installed, which I feel gives more control over switching it on and off if you need to for some reason.

alias grep='/usr/local/bin/grep --color'

Another bonus to using this method is that it will put the duplicated packages you are currently using in plain site in your ~/.profile.

Steam Powered SSD

2012-04-20T00:00:00-05:00

Anyone who owns a solid state hard drive and has a steam account can know how frustrating it may be running low on hard disk and not being able to split up your steam games.

Today I’ve come up with a solution for this. While it may not be a very elegant one, it still allows me to solve one of my biggest issues: being able to move steam games I do not play often to a mechanical drive.

First thing you’ll need for this is a shell extension called Link Shell Extension, it essentially allows us to create symbolic links on windows. Grab the prerequisit VC++ Redistributable Package and Link Shell Extension installer from their site. Install Link Shell Extension following the instructions on their site.

The reason we need this symlink functionality is because according to the Steam support team:

Steam installs to the following folder by default:

C:\Program Files\Steam

Files for games installed on Steam are stored in the following folder:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\

During the installation of Steam, you have the option to install Steam to a location other than the default. Since Steam relies on the game files residing in the SteamApps folder, your game files will go to whatever folder you have Steam installed in. The game files must be in the SteamApps folder in order to function.

Steam suggests you move the entire directory to a new drive. I suggest moving only the games you want to. You may be limited in that some of the valve games all share a common directory but I’m not too sure since I haven’t played around with this too much as of yet.

#Let’s Do It Here’s the process in a nutshell

##Moving the game

Open Windows Explorer up to your steamapps directory (should be something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps). Pick a folder for a game you want to move. In my test case I used Magicka since it was a relatively small game.
**Right click > Cut **
Open your mechanical drive or partition where you are going to dump it and **Right Click > Paste **

##Creating a Symlink Here’s where the magic happens:

In your mechanical location, right click the newly pasted directory and click Pick Link Source
Go back to your steamapps directory and right click then click Drop As… > Symbolic Link

If everything went well you should be able to launch the game through steam.

I found the tool from a howtogeek article that came up in a google search for symlink on windows 7.

Upgrading grep in OS X

2012-03-14T00:00:00-05:00

This Article Is Outdated

The information in this article is outdated and may contain information which is now incorrect. A newer version of this article is now available.

By default OS X (10.7 in this case) comes installed with grep version 2.5.1. Unfortunately if you want to use the --exclude-dir option (which you probably will if you are using any type of VCS) then you will have to upgrade it, since this is a feature of grep version >= 2.5.1a. If you are using macports or fink then the solution is simple, install via the command line.

Recently, I have been using homebrew. Today I found out that the use of homebrew to install already-bundled system applications (like grep) is discouraged and unsupported, except with certain special cases. Due to the way homebrew recipes work, however, this does not stop us from making our own. In this case, I found one on the web. To install the latest grep via homebrew:

brew install xz #required for installing grep through homebrew
brew install https://raw.github.com/adamv/homebrew-alt/master/duplicates/grep.rb

After grep is installed via homebrew do a grep --version. If you are still showing version 2.5.1 (which you should be) then you need to update your paths. For some reason in OS X, /usr/bin comes before /usr/local/bin, and for our version of grep to be found by default we need to rearrange this. From what I read on stack overflow this is pretty harmless.

There is a file called /etc/paths which lists paths one per line, if you have administrator rights and you don’t feel guilty about modifying system files you can rearrange this file to put /usr/local/bin in front of /usr/bin.

The other option is the more obvious per-user change in ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile.

For more information and recipes not included in homebrew by default, check out the homebrew-alt repository on github.

Gettin' Tango Wid it

2012-03-13T00:00:00-05:00

Recently I decided to give Sequel Pro another whirl instead of running SQLyog as I normally do on OS X under wine using WineBotter. My first objective, however, was to customize the color scheme to something my eyes are more accustomed to: the tango color palette. Here’s a small preview of what it looks like:

I’ve also taken it upon myself to create a color palette for the built in OS X color palette widget. You can download them both from the links below:

S&M - Drum Cover

2012-03-12T00:00:00-05:00

Me rocking out to some Rihanna on my drum set. The original song is S&M by Rihanna

Monaco "Bold" - Fixing the Ugly OS X Fonts in Lion

2012-02-29T00:00:00-06:00

One thing that’s really bugged me since I started using OS X Lion was the way my favorite coding font—Monaco—appears at 14pt and above. On my Snow Leopard installation of OS X the fonts appear bold-ish, but on Lion they appear narrow and emaciated. The characters actually appear so thin that it’s hard to read and the font just does not look good. This forced me into using the font Menlo, which was Apple’s replacement to Monaco as a default terminal font since Snow Leopard (10.6).

Today I found the solution while complaining to a colleague of mine. I honestly do my best problem solving while whining. Originally, I thought the problem was that the font itself had changed. As I was explaining it I figured out that the issue was maybe not the font, but the antialiasing applied to that font. A quick search led me to an article on font smoothing in snow leopard.

Following the guide there all that was left is to execute the command:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

and restart my terminal and MacVim.

Here is a before and after:

I think valid values to substitute in for the int are in the range 0–4.

PHPUnit Fails Silently, Returning Code 255

2012-02-27T00:00:00-06:00

A few days ago I set up PHPUnit on my OS X using MAMP’s pear. Everything seemed to be set up properly except I kept getting this weird issue anytime I ran phpunit, I would get the following:

specs/ (dev) $ phpunit .
specs/ (dev) $ echo $?
255

No errors output, and phpunit is returning code 255. It took me forever to figure out what this meant and none of the search results in google were helping either. I finally realized the issue today.

PHPUnit was encountering a php error. While I thought I had error_reporting enabled in my php.ini. A few days later, I realized I had display_errors set to Off. If you want to see what’s going on you have to set display_errors to On.

Now I am getting more meaningful output (truncated):

Warning: require_once(PHPUnit/Framework.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory

Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required 'PHPUnit/Framework.php' (include_path='.:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.2.17/lib/php/PHPUnit:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.2.17/lib/php:/Users/gmcquillan/Sites/ZendFramework-1.10.6/library/')

Which I thought meant it’s not finding my PHPUnit library in my php include path. I tried finagling with my include_path for quite a while.

According to the output it was searching in the right spot, but still not coming up for some reason. I eventually figured out that the cause of this issue was a require_once statement that I had at the top of my unit test code file:

require_once 'PHPUnit/Framework.php';

When I looked in my PHPUnit directory I noticed this file did not exist, so it must have been a difference between the version of PHPUnit I was using previously and the current version.

Here are some quick wins to help you solve your issue:

Check display_errors in php.ini (In MAMP 2.0.5 that’s in /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.2.17/conf/php.ini and of course if you’re using php 5.3 you should be editing the one in your php5.3 directory
Check the error_reporting in php.ini

Once you are able to see the error message output, the problem should be very clear. When changing php.ini the cli php will see changes immediately (unlike apache where you will have to restart the server for changes to take effect)

Autocompleting Rake Tasks In Bash

2012-02-27T00:00:00-06:00

I found out today that it’s possible to autocomplete rake tasks in bash. All that’s needed is a simple ruby script and some changes to your ~/.profile.

(Original information taken from a tumble blog post)

First you need to grab a script called ruby-completion.rb, which I’ve already added to my github dotfiles repository.

Then, as per the script comments, add the following to your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc:

complete -C /path/to/rake-completion.rb -o default rake

Make sure that the script has execute permissions (chmod u+x ruby-completion.sh) or it will return some strange results when you hit tab

Including Files Using Straight HTML

2012-02-23T00:00:00-06:00

Getting the job done for a particular task always calls forth the need for the proper set of tools. In this particular case, the task was to create a single-page static html content-rich site. When I say the site is “content-rich” what I actually mean is that there are paragraphs upon paragraphs of copy: text, images, etc.

Editing a giant HTML page no different than editing a large file of code written in any other language: it is a maintenance nightmare and so it is what you call not fun.

##Searching for Solutions I knew about jekyll and of course since I love it so much, I wanted to use it, however jekyll is way too much for what is needed. All I really need for this particular project is a way to use include statements in HTML.

###Server-Side Options There are a number of different ways to include one HTML document inside of another, but none of these methods are incorporated by using HTML directly by itself. Anyone who is familiar with PHP is familiar with the PHP [include]php-include function:

<?php include("myfile.html") ?>

while those who haven’t used php who have used apache or Microsoft IIS are familiar with SSI, which may appear in the form of something like:

<!-- #include virtual="myfile.html" -->

Neither one of these options seemed all too appealing to me. They both required some kind of processing from a server which is not testable offline without running a local server and also requires processing on every page hit.

What I really wanted was a way to be able to do this offline, and “build” my site by piecing it together somehow.

##Building Offline Here are the other methods I came across, starting with the simplest ideas of my own and moving on to the better ideas that I came across on the web.

###The Unix cat Utility The first thing I came up with was using cat. In case you don’t know, cat is the unix utility which concatenates multiple files. This was my sure-fire way to get the project moving assuming I couldn’t come up with something better. cat has a few advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages to using cat:

I already know how to use it
It’s fairly simple
There’s no way it won’t work

Disadvantages to using cat:

It is extremely messy
It will require start and end tags to be separated across multiple files
If there is an HTML error it will be hard to track across these multiple files

###Using sed and cat The second idea I came up with was to create some kind of template, with separate pages and somehow include them. I thought it might be possible to somehow use sed to do a regex replace, find and replace something like

{ include myfile.html }

with the value of cat myfile.html. This seemed kind of tricky and too much work.

Advantages of using sed and cat:

Gets me that nice looking template I wanted

Disadvantages of using sed and cat:

Requires a lot of coding and time spent trouble shooting regex, etc.

###Using the C Preprocessor I went for some help on IRC after many failed attempts to return relevant search results for my regex replacement method. After explaining my situation someone recommended the use of a preprocessor—which is exactly what I was creating without even realizing it. We found a document on the web with instructions on Using a C preprocessor as an HTML authoring tool.

In short, this allows me to create a template file:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>blickity blah</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        #include "mypage.html"
    </body>
</html>

and run it through gcc:

gcc -E -x c -P -C sample.htm > output/sample.html

The original document goes through a breakdown of each flag, optionally you could read the manpages for more detail (man gcc).

This was pretty neat and I could have even stopped at this but I decided to go with a slightly more elegant solution and rather than using gcc I decided to go with m4.

Advantages to using C Preprocessor:

The tools and language are pre-existing
It is fairly easy to invoke
No extra work needed to be done

Disadvantages to using C Preprocessor:

Remembering the proper gcc arguments to disable the c compiler and enable it for preprocessing only is a bit cumbersome unless you are extremely familiar with gcc’s command line options.

###Using M4 This method is identical to using the C Preprocessor. The difference here is that it’s a little simpler. We create a template file similar to before:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>blickity blah</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        include(mypage.html)
    </body>
</html>

and run it through m4:

m4 index.html > output/index.html

The only issue I had here with m4 is that it was adding a newline character after my include for some reason. To fix that I used dnl which I believe stands for “discard new line.” If that’s too hard to remember, I like to think of it as “do not line,” mostly because this makes no sense at all but keeps the meaning clear. Now the original template looks something more like this:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>blickity blah</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        include(mypage.html)dnl
    </body>
</html>

Advantages to using m4:

The tools and language are pre-existing
It is fairly easy to invoke
No extra work needed to be done

and for disadvantages… There are no real show-stopping disadvantages that I can come up with.

##Wrapping it Up Here is how I set up a small example for production work.

mkdir site
cd site/
mkdir pages templates webroot
for i in {1..5}; do echo "<p>This is page $i</p>" > pages/page-$i.html; done

Which leaves us with:

.
├── pages
│   ├── page-1.html
│   ├── page-2.html
│   ├── page-3.html
│   ├── page-4.html
│   └── page-5.html
├── templates
└── webroot

Here’s my explanation. Pages (or sections) will go into the pages/ directory. All templates will go under templates/ the published result will be compiled and sent to webroot/.

Now let’s create a simple template (vim templates/index.html):

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
        <title>Test Page</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="section-1">
            include(pages/page-1.html)dnl
        </div>
        <div id="section-2">
            include(pages/page-2.html)dnl
        </div>
        <div id="section-3">
            include(pages/page-3.html)dnl
        </div>
        <div id="section-4">
            include(pages/page-4.html)dnl
        </div>
        <div id="section-5">
            include(pages/page-5.html)dnl
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

To help manage everything, I’m using a rakefile. If you don’t like rake you’re welcome to use make or a shell script of your own. Here’s what the Rakefile looks like (vim Rakefile):

require 'rake/clean'

SRC='templates/*.html'
DEST='webroot'
CLEAN.include("#{DEST}/*")

task :compile do
  puts 'Compiling...'
  templates = FileList[SRC]
  templates.each do |t|
    sh "m4 #{t} > #{DEST}/#{File.basename(t)}"
  end
end

task :tidy do
  puts 'Tidying...'
  files = FileList["#{DEST}/*.html"]
  files.each do |f|
    sh "tidy -i -n -m #{f}"
  end
end

task :default => ['compile']

It’s somewhat configurable by changing the SRC and DEST variables at the top, to allow you to name your directories differently.

Running rake will default to compiling your HTML:

rake
tree

Outputs:

.
├── Rakefile
├── pages
│   ├── page-1.html
│   ├── page-2.html
│   ├── page-3.html
│   ├── page-4.html
│   └── page-5.html
├── templates
│   └── index.html
└── webroot
    └── index.html

3 directories, 8 files

and if we examine the output file:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
        <title>Test Page</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="section-1">
            <p>This is page 1</p>
        </div>
        <div id="section-2">
            <p>This is page 2</p>
        </div>
        <div id="section-3">
            <p>This is page 3</p>
        </div>
        <div id="section-4">
            <p>This is page 4</p>
        </div>
        <div id="section-5">
            <p>This is page 5</p>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

Success! If you noticed, I also added a bonus tidy task which can be invoked with rake tidy afterwards, this will allow us to format the html in a pretty way and validate it.

Custom Mission Control Keyboard Shortcuts in OS X

2012-02-16T00:00:00-06:00

One aspect of Mission Control in OS X Lion I found irritating was similar to the problem I had with Spaces on Leopard and Snow Leopard: customizing the shortcut keys to whatever I wanted.

For a while, I had been using the middle mouse click as a method for showing Mission Control, because it was more convenient than using CTRL + ↑. This provided the disadvantage that I could not use the middle mouse button for anything else—which I commonly use for opening new tabs in Firefox.

Today I realized the solution here is similar to the solution of a previous issue I had with customizing keyboard shortcuts. There is an entire section in the Preferences Pane dedicated to Keyboard Shortcuts.

Open your Preferences Pane
Click **Keyboard **
Click Keyboard Shortcuts
Select Mission Control on the left pane
Click on the box next to the mission control on the right side to specify a new shortcut

Stop Rearranging My Spaces, OS X!

2012-02-09T00:00:00-06:00

One of the most aggravating things I’ve had to put up with in Lion so far since I started using it a month back probably has to be the revamped concept of spaces.

Being a huge linux nerd, I jumped for joy when I discovered that the key shortcuts for spaces were now more customizable from Snow Leopard rendering them “actually usable” for my purposes. One of the biggest downsides to the way the new spaces work, however, is that the desktops will randomly get mixed up or out of order. This leaves me with something like “Desktop 1, Desktop 3, Desktop 4, Desktop 2” which just seems kind of silly to me. The shortcuts will always bring you to the right desktop no matter what, but if you use a touch pad gesture or mouse button to show mission control it can be frustrating trying to find the right desktop.

Today I finally got fed up enough to find the solution. After scouring the net for a hot minute I found a post on lockergnome.net that led me to the right answer.

Open System Preferences > Mission Control, and uncheck Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use.

Editing An Incorrect Commit Message In Git

2012-02-08T00:00:00-06:00

To fix an incorrect commit message to the head of a repository use the following command:

git commit --amend

This will allow you to enter a new message for the previous commit. From stack overflow:

Used to amend the tip of the current branch. Prepare the tree object you would want to replace the latest commit as usual (this includes the usual -i/-o and explicit paths), and the commit log editor is seeded with the commit message from the tip of the current branch. The commit you create replaces the current tip – if it was a merge, it will have the parents of the current tip as parents – so the current top commit is discarded.

It is a rough equivalent for:

$ git reset --soft HEAD^
$ ... do something else to come up with the right tree ...
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD

but can be used to amend a merge commit.

MySQL and Rake - Library Not Loaded

2012-02-03T00:00:00-06:00

When trying to run a Rakefile that I created under a linux environment on OS X for the first time I ran into this message:

dlopen(/Users/myuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/mysql2-0.3.11/lib/mysql2/mysql2.bundle, 9): Library not loaded: libmysqlclient.18.dylib
  Referenced from: /Users/myuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/mysql2-0.3.11/lib/mysql2/mysql2.bundle
  Reason: image not found - /Users/myuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/mysql2-0.3.11/lib/mysql2/mysql2.bundle

(See full trace by running task with --trace)

Note: I was using MySQL provided by the OS X installer PKG file from the mysql website, rather than using MAMP

I googled the issue and found the problem on a stack overflow post—which seemed to have useful information—but it didn’t work for me.

A comment one on one of the answers stated:

Your instance of the mysql2 gem was built against the /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.16.dylib library. For one reason or another, that library is not currently available on your system at that pathname (MySQL removed/moved/upgraded?).

and another comment had to offer:

You probably need to rebuild your mysql2 gem and point it to the mysql_config (or mysql_config5) from your MySQL installation (in /usr/bin?):
gem install mysql2 -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/bin/mysql_config

I tried the second option, by replacing the --with-mysql-config= with the one I found on my system in /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config but this didn’t help. Then I looked at my error message and compared it to the one on the stack overflow post and I realized the problem: the dylib was not in my path.

##The Solution The solution was to add the library to my path. Once again I poked around in /usr/local/mysql/ and located the proper path to the dylib and added it to my DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable in ~/.profile:

#add mysql dylib to dylib path
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/mysql/lib/"

Managing Images with Jekyll

2012-01-31T00:00:00-06:00

I’ve only been using Jekyll for about a week now and I can already see how managing images for each post could be an issue. I figure, I can’t have just one image/ directory and dump everything in there because at some point the file names will overlap and then I have to try to uniquely name all of my images, which seems pretty complicated. The next idea I had was to create an image directory to mimic the current date/time of the post, this way I could have something like the following:

images/
└── 2012
    └── 01
        ├── 24
        │   ├── keyboard-extra-key-small.png
        │   ├── keyboard-extra-key.jpg
        │   ├── keyboard-problem-small.png
        │   ├── keyboard-problem.jpg
        │   ├── keyboard-solution-small.png
        │   └── keyboard-solution.jpg
        └── 31
            ├── a.jpg
            ├── q.gif
            └── test.png

A somewhat structured and organized way of managing my images. But wait! That looks like a pain in the neck to create all of those directories and then move all of my files in there! (Actually… it is).

So here is my solution. I have added a rake task which will cleverly do all this grunt work for me, plus one extra handy feature: it will move all of the loose images in the images/ directory where they belong.

This is what it looks like:

desc 'Move all images in images/ to the current date image directory'
task :images do
  images = FileList['images/*.*']
  time = Time.new
  target = Rake.application.original_dir + time.strftime('/%Y/%m/%d/')
  #unless the file list is empty
  unless images.existing.empty?
      puts 'Cleaning images: ' + images.existing.to_s + ' => ' + target
      begin
        Dir::mkdir(target)
      rescue
      end
      mv images.existing, target
  end
end

With this, I can just dump all of the images relevant to the article post I’m currently working on into images/, then when I’m ready run a rake images and have all of the images moved into images/%Y/%m/%d according to the current date/time.

Note: this moves *.* which could be any type of file that has an extension, not just images. I thought it would be too inaccurate to copy only specific file extensions and I should only be putting images or anything I might consider an image in there, anyway. Maybe a better name for this would be media and then I would rename images/ to media/ and have all media served from there.

Tab Settings Based On Filetype

2012-01-30T00:00:00-06:00

This one is a widely known feature of vim, as it should be for any other editor out there. Here’s a brief example on how to set your tab spacing settings depending on the filetype in vim. Add the following to your vimrc:

autocmd Filetype html setlocal ts=2 sts=2 sw=2
autocmd Filetype ruby setlocal ts=2 sts=2 sw=2
autocmd Filetype javascript setlocal ts=4 sts=4 sw=4

(As seen on stack overflow)

To find out the filetype of the current file in vim, type:

:set filetype

Settings will take effect when the file is loaded, so you may need to source your vimrc (:so ~/.vimrc) and then :e your file again.

Terminal.app: Highlight Full File Path on Double Click (OS X)

2012-01-30T00:00:00-06:00

One of my biggest complaints about the terminal in OS X—vs. gnome-terminal in the linux world, and possibly a few other terms—is that when I am using git or svn and I want to add or commit only one file I can’t just double click the full path to select it.

Example:

# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#   assets/themes/twitter/css/hi3.css

the default action when you double click on the word twitter is that Terminal.app will highlight only the word twitter. I wanted a way to make it highlight the entire file path without grabbing the hash mark at the beginning of the line. While it’s not my favorite solution, I did come across a forum post today that explained holding the cmd and shift keys when you double click will cause Terminal.app to select the whole file path. Someone else added on later that cmd + shift + double clicking a URL will open it.

Unknown Column Display Price Group 0 In Field List

2012-01-30T00:00:00-06:00

Today while trying to apply my catalog price rules I came across the following message:

SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'e.display_price_group_0' in 'field list'

After searching google I found out that this can be fixed by rebuilding the Flat Catalog Product cache.

source: Magento Forum

A Better Solution for Less.css

2012-01-26T00:00:00-06:00

Recently I’ve discovered the joys of working with less.css (not to be confused with the less framework, which is also related to CSS). I think the one thing that turned me on to the idea was the Less.app GUI application for Mac OS X.

Less.app monitors a directory and when there are any file changes to any .less files, it compiles a .css, minifies it, and places it in a /css directory, preserving a directory structure like the following:

site/
├── css
│   └── main.css
└── less
    └── main.less

I kind of liked this idea because I thought it kept everything neat. The only problem I had with Less.app is that it didn’t seem to work very often. I had a lot of issues where I would save a file and it would not pick the changes up. I had to hit save twice for it to pick up the changes, and even then sometimes it would crash completely and have to be restarted. It got to the point where I would have to restart Less.app 2–5 times in a one hour session. I am assuming that it was related to the way vim saves files, otherwise nobody else would be using this app. After 3 or 4 program updates I noticed the problem was still there and something had to be done.

I found out from a buddy that another tool called lessc was available from the creators of less. I had seen it mentioned in blog posts but I was never able to find it until one day I realized it was on their github page in the bin directory.

Grab lessc and make sure it’s in your $PATH. In order to use lessc, you need to install node.js. On OS X, this can be done via homebrew:

brew install node

or macports:

port install node

Or on Ubuntu using the following:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs

I created this bash script which wraps lessc to add some functionality:

lesscomp

#!/bin/bash

#compile less.css files, and compress them hardcore.
if [[ $# == 1 ]]; then
    infile=$1
    outfile=$(basename ${infile%.*})
    outpath="$(dirname $infile)/../css"

    if [[ -d $outpath ]]; then
        outfile="$outpath/$outfile.css"
    else
        outfile="$(dirname $infile)/$outfile.css"
    fi
    lessc -x $infile |perl -ne 'chomp; print "$_";' > $outfile
fi

The script attempts to save the output file to a css/ directory one level up from the .less file, assuming that directory exists. If it cannot find a ../css/ then it will output to the same directory as the input file. Place it somewhere in your path, I usually throw all of my scripts into $HOME/bin and add that to $PATH.

Then, add the following to your ~/.vimrc:

au BufWritePost *.less silent !lesscomp %

Excel vs. CSV

2012-01-25T00:00:00-06:00

I came across an interesting bug today with Microsoft Excel 2012. Historically, Excel has had this lovely issue of not being able to handle importing CSV data when there is an endline character in the middle of a field. So if your file looks like this:

"name","description","price"
"coffee","delicious coffee from Brazil
*mud flavor available!","10.99"
"green tea","tea which is green","5.99"

Excel will see the endline in the first record and immediately assume that the end of the line means the end of the record. Creating a second row with the name “*mud flavor available!” and a description of “10.99” which is clearly not what we want.

Today I found out that for whatever god forsaken reason, Microsoft has decided that when you double click the csv file to open it, these situations are handled properly. However if you attempt to do a data import from inside Excel, the behavior changes and Excel is unable to handle the endlines.

Another important thing to note is that Excel will not recognize \n as an endline character, it has to be \r\n.

Excel also appears to be unable to open csv files from the File > Open menu.

Note: this was noted & tested on Excel 2012 for OS X

Disabling A Key On Your Keyboard

2012-01-24T00:00:00-06:00

The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 that I use at work has this lovely extra backspace button that I always seem to hit by mistake against the bottom side of the desk when using the keyboard on my lap, which I do often.

I never thought much of this until one day I almost deleted a table in my dev database (luckily it was on dev and luckily SQLyog asked for confirmation first) This raised a red flag, I knew something had to be done. “Ah”, I thought, “I’ll just use xmodmap to remap the extra backspace key to do nothing.” Here are the steps I took:

Load up xev from the terminal. xev (x-event) is a tool which will help you capture all x events.
Press the desired key

Grab the keycode section of the output from the terminal. For example, pressing the ‘a’ key yields the keycode 38:

 KeyRelease event, serial 35, synthetic NO, window 0x7200001,
 root 0x27a, subw 0x0, time 607631713, (-736,656), root:(702,705),
 state 0x10, keycode >>> 38 <<< (keysym 0x61, a), same_screen YES,
 XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (61) "a"
 XFilterEvent returns: False

In the case of my extra backspace, the keycode resolved to 22
Use xmodmap to unassign the key. I believe there is actually a remove directive, but since I don’t know exactly how to use it I just assign it to nothing:
```
 xmodmap -e 'keycode 22 = '
```
Now try using the key you disabled!

Awesome! My extra backspace key stopped working. I tested it on the other machine as well through synergy just to make sure and all was well there, too!

##But wait, there’s more! I went back to work and soon I discovered my mistake. Keycode 22 is the same keycode that the normal backspace key produces. I cursed out Microsoft but only until I came up with a reliable, more cross-platform solution

Mouse and Keyboard - Simple Sharing with Synergy

2012-01-23T00:00:00-06:00

When working with multiple computers it can be a pain to have to interface with multiple inputs such as keyboards, mice, etc. Not only does it get confusing from time to time, but it’s just plain annoying. Especially when there is a laptop in play.

In my case, I wanted to use my mac laptop (lid closed) and an external display, since staring down at a 13” screen for 8+ hours a day wasn’t going over too well with my neck. The way to go about doing this is to close the lid, plug in another input device and monitor and start typing or clicking on it and unlocking the screen. With the mac laptops this is also only possible when the AC power adapter is connect. Due to some networking issues at work I was also required to plug in to a wired network as well. So now I had to plug in: power, mouse, keyboard, monitor, and a network cable. This worked well for me for about 2–3 days. Then I realized something. Plugging all of this junk into the the laptop every day when I get into the office and unplugging it when I leave was a pain in the ass. That’s when I remembered about an old friend of mine called synergy.

##synergy Synergy is a software package that attempts to emulate a KVM switch, minus the video portion—since it’s software. It works by running a client/server desktop application. One computer acts as the server, sharing its mouse and keyboard, while the other computer connects to it as a client to borrow the shared input devices.

I’m not going to get into the basics of configuring synergy from the ground up (after all, I did say it was an old friend, right?). The point I wanted to focus on in this post was how I took it a step further by adding encryption.

I was a little bit concerned about security this time around, since previously when I used synergy at work I was connecting a linux computer (host) to a windows box (client) and I didn’t really care about security on windows because—well—it’s windows. Now I am using synergy to connect the peripherals which are attached to the same linux machine to a mac laptop. Mac OS X—like linux—requires authentication every now and then, and my login password isn’t something I wanted to broadcast over the office network in broad daylight. After doing a bit of research I found out that I can tunnel the synergy client via SSH to encrypt it. After following the instructions and doing some tests I created a couple of scripts to do this for me:

##synergy-connect The first script is called synergy-connect. It creates the SSH tunnel on my localhost and it forwards all requests on port 24800 (the default synergy port) to the same port on a different host name.

Remember that when configuring synergy, synergy requires a host name to be used. Synergy will not connect to an IP address. This means that if you are having trouble connecting your synergy to an IP address it’s time to add some entries to your hosts file and optionally set up a static IPs for the machines as well.

synergy-connect:

#!/bin/bash

ssh -f -N -L localhost:24800:remoteHostName:24800 remoteHostName
synergyc localhost

##resyn resyn is another script that I created which closes out synergy and reconnects it, this is extremely convenient for when you need to reconnect and doing so means losing your only input device to type in the connect command again after disconnecting it.

resyn:

#!/bin/bash

killall -9 ssh
killall -9 synergyc
synergy-connect

Working With Comma Separated Lists In Mysql

2012-01-23T00:00:00-06:00

I was asked recently to provide a feed from Magento which would provide a list of all active SKUs, with product names, descriptions, urls and a comma separated list of categories by name.

I assembled a query in MySQL. I grabbed all the products from catalog_product_entity and joined it with catalog_product_entity_int to determine if the products are enabled—pretty standard operation. Then after doing this I joined again to the catalog_product_flat table for the appropriate store ID since it’s easier to pull product information from than joining to the same varchar table 150 times. I ran into a small problem when it came down to getting the category names.

The categories in magento are stored as a comma separated list of entity_ids in the cache tables, not a comma separated list of category names.

I worked a bit on it until I ended up with a query that was capable of getting a comma separated list of names for a single row. It looked something like

SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(name) FROM
    catalog_category_flat_store_1
WHERE entity_id IN ( 0, 1, 2, 3 /* example list of ids... */ )

This is where I thought, “wow MySQL makes it so easy to work with comma separated lists”—WRONG

While getting this list was simple, iterating over a result set with this query was not a possibility because when the field returns the values it returns them as a string. In other words:

"1, 2, 3" != 1, 2, 3

I pulled the following query from slickdev after searching for a number of hours:

DELIMITER //
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `splitAndTranslate` //
CREATE FUNCTION splitAndTranslate(str TEXT, delim VARCHAR(124))
RETURNS TEXT
DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN
    DECLARE i INT DEFAULT 0;    -- total number of delimiters
    DECLARE ctr INT DEFAULT 0;    -- counter for the loop
    DECLARE str_len INT;        -- string length,self explanatory
    DECLARE out_str text DEFAULT '';    -- return string holder
    DECLARE temp_str text DEFAULT '';    -- temporary string holder
    DECLARE temp_val VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT '';    -- temporary string holder for query

    -- get length
    SET str_len=LENGTH(str);

    SET i = (LENGTH(str)-LENGTH(REPLACE(str, delim, '')))/LENGTH(delim) + 1;
        -- get total number delimeters and add 1
        -- add 1 since total separated values are 1 more than the number of delimiters

    -- start of while loop
    WHILE(ctr<i) DO
        -- add 1 to the counter, which will also be used to get the value of the string
        SET ctr=ctr+1;

        -- get value separated by delimiter using ctr as the index
        SET temp_str = REPLACE(SUBSTRING(SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim, ctr), LENGTH(SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim,ctr - 1)) + 1), delim, '');

        -- query real value and insert into temporary value holder, temp_str contains the exploded ID
        SELECT <real_value_column> INTO temp_val FROM <my_table> WHERE <table_id>=temp_str;

        -- concat real value into output string separated by delimiter
            SET out_str=CONCAT(out_str, temp_val, ',');
    END WHILE;
    -- end of while loop

    -- trim delimiter from end of string
    SET out_str=TRIM(TRAILING delim FROM out_str);
    RETURN(out_str);    -- return

END//

then adapted it for my needs and it worked. The query takes about 5 minutes to run after all the modifications I made.

/etc/hosts.ac? what the duck is that?

2012-01-21T00:00:00-06:00

Recently at my job I’ve started doing some work on a mac (yay!) which means I now get to use some of the fun extra mac tools that I don’t have available on linux, but it also means having some things that are more difficult to configure, strangely.

The first anomaly I’ve encountered so far was in adding host entries for sites that are not in our DNS. These are sites that are either not in DNS yet but are pending or sites that will never be added to DNS due to security reasons or because they are not intended to be used by anyone but us programmers.

##The Problem The first thing I noticed when editing the /etc/hosts file on OS X Lion for the first time is that when I rebooted the machine all changes I made would disappear completely. Sometimes they would even change if I didn’t reboot. When I opened up /etc I noticed there was another file called /etc/hosts.ac which I had never seen before. Originally I thought this was some sort of system change that Apple had made, but I later on discovered that this was actually the work of Cisco’s AnyConnect VPN client. Cisco automatically replaces your /etc/hosts with its own /etc/hosts.ac

##The Zinger Here’s the zinger: OS X does not know about hosts.ac, nor does it care. So what do we do in this situation? Well after having to edit both files for a long time I decided it was time to do something about it. Here is my solution.

Create a vim autocmd to save all changes made to /etc/hosts into /etc/hosts.ac also. Throw the following snippet into your .vimrc:

au! BufWritePost hosts "clear all autocommands
au BufWritePost hosts :w! %:p.ac "save a copy of hosts as "hosts.ac"

Don’t forget to source your vimrc again after. Now when you save your hosts file it will automatically copy it to your hosts.ac, now Cisco and OS X can be happy together!

Note: There is one downside to this approach, unfortunately. I couldn’t figure out how to hone it specifically on the hosts file in /etc/ so this autocmd will actually trigger on any file in any location named hosts.

For more information about manipulating file names in vim check out

:h filename-modifiers

otaku-elite meets jekyll

2012-01-21T00:00:00-06:00

After not having the desire to post content to this site for a very long time I decided it was time to take action. But how? And what was the problem in the first place?

##The Problem I needed a way to log (blog?) my discoveries for all of the things I do, but mostly work related stuff, since that’s where I spend most of my time (har har). Even though being a PHP programmer may seem like a pretty normal thing in that over time you sort of learn the ropes and acquire your sack of tricks to reuse over and over I’ve found myself always craving for something a little extra. I always push myself to find something new and interesting at work that can help me get my work done better and more effectively than before. Let’s face it, if I always did everything the same way I’d just get bored all the time.

What I really needed was an efficient way to log my findings. I tried setting up a drupal blog at work. It took me quite some time to get all the settings configured right and all the right plugins installed. Then to customize the themes and all of that and then you have to deal with caching and whatever else. After I took the time to go through all of that I realized more and more how inconvenient it was for me to add content to the blog itself—nothing against drupal itself, as I would always recommend drupal to most people—but the part about drupal I did not like was having to log into an admin section on the site and have to click around in a few places, then write the post using HTML in a text field provided by the CMS. I’m also not a fan of using wysiwyg anything, either.

As a temporary solution I was using the it’s all text extension for firefox, which helps when I have to do anything with drupal in that it allows me to use my favorite editor (vim). The down side to this is that it also added another step. And after saving the buffer in vim I still had to click the save button in drupal, and since there is no “save & continue editing” button by default in drupal it became a nuisance in that testing slight changes repeatedly became a cumbersome task.

After switching to git and using github for a while I became very comfortable with writing documentation using markdown, and I decided to forget the whole blog as a website thing all together and just store a bunch of markdown text files on my hard drive which were generated for me by a shell script that I wrote. The shell script accepts an article title as an argument and automatically generates a markdown file in an organized directory structure that resembles something like Y-m/d/post-title.md. I created another bash script which would execute a grep on the directory as well so the articles were all searchable. This worked fairly well for me for some time as it allowed me to just open up a terminal and type, for example, createblog creating modules in magento and just start typing away. I always thought that if I wanted to publish it or read it nicely later on I could create some other script to generate PDFs or HTML and link them together.

##The Solution Then I found out about jekyll. Jekyll is not a CMS, but rather a text parsing engine which works similar to what I was just explaining, except all of the complicated advanced features that I would ever think to implement myself were already done for me (tagging and categorizing, just to name a few). So in short, jekyll will take markdown or textile as input and throw a template on over it to generate some nice HTML.

##Jekyll Bootstrap The initial setup for jekyll was a pain in the butt. Especially since it comes with absolutely no templates or framework and the documentation is a bit hairy since it doesn’t say too much right out and the github pages are a little bit tricky to navigate since they seem to have absolutely no ordering to them at all. After searching around some more for information on jekyll (which for some reason appears to be rather scarce) I came across jekyll bootstrap which is a framework geared for getting you started out on jekyll using twitter’s own bootstrap css framework. Which got me to where I am now, a decent looking site using jekyll which provided the least amount of effort possible and now I can focus on my content :)

There will probably be more (concise) blog posts to come that focus in on hot topics that the rest of the world may actually care about.

Sometimes I Rage

2011-08-06T00:00:00-05:00

Here’s an original song I wrote and performed for a League of Legends song competition. I did not win :(

Teenage Dirtbag Guitar Cover

2011-06-26T00:00:00-05:00

This is me performing Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus.

California Gurls Drum Cover

2011-04-24T00:00:00-05:00

My first time trying to record a drum cover of a pop song. The original song is California Gurls by Katy Perry.

Story of My Life - Guitar Cover

2011-04-03T00:00:00-05:00

Me performing Story of My Life by Social Distortion.

Follow Me - Guitar Cover

2011-03-19T00:00:00-05:00

This is the first music video I’ve ever made. It’s a cover the Uncle Kracker song Follow Me.