Nov 2, 2009 So here it is this year I was Optimus Prime, sorry for the quality of my photo auto focus was left off, hopefully someone gets me a crisper copy. I’ve also included meg’s very nice Samurai PIzza Cats costume:
Optimus Prime Costume
Who you gonna call when you need some pepperoni!
Total time for the costumes was about 6 days, trophies were won.
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Halloween, Pizza Cats, Transformers
Nov 2, 2009 I am currently working on a small MPI project, and I had one hell of a time getting MPI up and running, specifically the MPICC (compiler) to work in xCode.
So here it is if you were wondering how to get it to work:
Put the following into a file called MPICC.pbcompspec
Note: ExecPath should be set to your mpicc path, find this by typing which mpicc in terminal. BasedOn should be set to whatever the system GCC is (4.2 for snow leopard).
Save this file to the following directory: /Developer/Library/Xcode/Specifications/, if the directory does not exist, create it, restart xCode.
Finally in your project, open the build targets and select the one you want to build with MPICC, get info on it, and add a custom rule for c source, MPICC should be in the list somewhere, if it is not then you messed up somewhere above.
Setting a custom C xCode target rule
The file: mpicc.pbcompspec
Sources:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/xcode-users/2008/Apr/msg00104.html
http://www.open-mpi.org/community/lists/devel/2007/02/1313.php
Oct 15, 2009 So I do a lot of java development, but for my project work I am looking to do a whole whack of C and possibly Objective-C. So this means xCode and I must become friends. My problem with this is I really like the eclipse text shortcuts for deleting / moving / duplicating lines. Also I am just used to control + space for my auto complete, and option + shift + r for refactoring.
Having encountered this problem before in TextMate doing ruby stuff I assumed there would be a handy macro solution, this was not the case. So after some serious web searching I found several articles on how to solve a few of these problems. Some suggested I use ruby, other showed some neat hacking tricks with some keyboard plists, at any rate I won’t go into the how, you can find those (here, and here ).
I am simply providing my key bindings file for anyone who cares to use it.
What it does:
These function quite a bit more responsively than applescripts (based on my observations), however it will clear out your clip board so be warned, if anyone has any idea about that lemme know.
To install it simply place eclipse-style.pbxkeys in ~/Library/Application Support/Xcode/Key Bindings/ reboot xCode and you should be able to select the key binding file as shown in the screen shot below.
xCode Key Binding Prefs witth Eclipse-Style
Hope this helps, sure makes coding in xCode more fun for me, and helps with the context switching between Eclipse and TextMate and xCode.
.joe
Sep 10, 2009 So I don’t blog much, and further more I hardly (if ever) blog about anything tech related. For a blog that claims to be about “tech talk” this is unacceptable 
So with that here is my first, and hopefully not my last, tech-ish blog post.
If you are like me, and since you are reading this I am going to assume you are. Then you are a developer (or my friend) and you probably have at least two, if not more, projects on the go.
Personally at this point I have the following things on the go:
So needless to say, I am a busy busy boy. What this also means at that on any given day I have to set up a different work context to get some stuff done. This can be as simple as switching the workspace in eclipse, or completely quitting everything opening text mate, launching rails… the list goes on. Wanting to save a few key strokes I figured (at the suggestion of my buddy Paul Lambert ) this was a job for AppleScript.
AppleScript is fairly straight forward, and really, without even understanding much of the particulars of the language, I was able to get the functionality I desired. The most exciting bit of all of this, which isn’t news to probably anyone, is that AppleScript compiles to Apple application bundles. This means that I can launch my development context from my most favourite of favourite app launchers, quicksilver.
So here is an example, a simple script that launches the terminal, opens three tabs (Tab 1: the rails app, Tab 2: the ruby console, Tab 3: the rails directory to run generators and so forth) and runs TextMate on the current directory. This of course requires that you’ve installed the command line mate capability.
Hope someone finds this helpful.
Cheers,
.joe
on new_terminal_tab()
tell application “System Events” to tell process “Terminal” to keystroke “t” using command down
end new_terminal_tab
– launch terminal stuff
tell application “Terminal”
activate
– launch rails app
do script change_directory in selected tab of the front window
do script “mongrel_rails start” in selected tab of the front window
– launch the console
my new_terminal_tab()
do script change_directory in selected tab of the front window
do script “script/console” in selected tab of the front window
– set another tab with the current directory for
– the purpose of running generator scripts
my new_terminal_tab()
do script change_directory in selected tab of the front window
do script “mate .” in selected tab of the front window
do script “clear” in selected tab of the front window
end tell
Jun 30, 2009 So I need to incorporate or something to that extent, and I am looking for a name for my company… ideas are welcome…
That is all.
Apr 20, 2009 So some goals have gone achieved, others are failing… In either case I thought I should take this chance to address some since it’s nearing the 1/3rd mark for this year.
Read at least 3 books for fun - Well I read Watchmen, and V for Vendetta, since they are both “Graphic Novels” I’ll call this one book. I think next I am going to read Solaris, it was on tv the other day and I’ve always wanted to read it since I loved 2001 and it’s supposed to be the Polish equivallent.
Run another half marathon (or at least 10 km) - Been running a lot, however the half is in may, so it’s looking like this will just be a get better at running goal.
Ski at least 20 days - Achieved!
19 days at Fernie
4 days at Revelstoke
3 days at Lake Louise
1 day at Silver Star
1 day at Kimberly
1 day of cat skiing = 29 days total, not a bad showing.
All other goals are… well works in progress, so stay tuned Suckas!
.joe out.
Mar 31, 2009 I’ll try and avoid any serious spoilers, but you’ve been warned.
So it’s all over, sigh. I really felt like they could have kept going. For those of you who have been living under a rock, and not seen the best show on earth! Battlestar Galactica (BSG hence forth) is a re-imagining of the original show from the 70s. The show starts off with the holocaust of mankind as we know it (in the show that is) and their escape and search for a new home called, earth.
Now from the outset it seems like just another science fiction drama, with lots of great explosions and so forth, but they really got back to the real essence of Sci Fi. In my humble opinion this essence involves the discussion of big ideas. The settings of science fiction allow the reader to be comfortable discussing things like religion, race, sex, torture, and so on because it is not their reality. This is exactly what BSG leverages. To give you an idea of how dark the show is, within the first 20 minutes of the pilot one of the main characters breaks a baby’s neck… and it gets darker from there.
Alright so the finale… A thing I very much respected about the writers of BSG is that they were not promised 5 season (God only knows why) and rather than have to wrap everything up in 4 episodes because of the network canceling them, they decided to put the show to bed in 4 seasons on their own terms. What made this ending great is the total sense of nihilism it left me with, odd I know, but the whole show you felt like they were building to something huge, and in the end it’s big… but it wasn’t the metaphysical revelations that we may have expected. They paid off on almost everything (with the exception of Starbuck, which they sort of did… but at the same rate didn’t really).
All in all I think this show will stand as one of the great Sci Fi shows of the genre, and in general a great story.
They are coming out with a prequel show called Caprica, but I am not holding my breath for it to be any kind of good. I am however pretty excited about ‘the plan’ teleplay which will come out some time in June.
.joe out.
Mar 5, 2009 I’ve been away for the week ripping up Fernie. Having grown up here I am all to familiar with the Skier vs Snowboarder mentality around here. For the balance of my life I’ve sat on the skier side of the argument, especially here where there is so much traversing on a deep pow day boarders just get left behind.
With meg in town, and me trying to get more days in on my pass I decided to give snowboarding a try, and sacrafice a pow day to my board. Turns out, it’s crazy fun.
Granted I fell more yesterday than in probably the last decade of skiing, once i figured out how to float the board on the snow, I started to really enjoy my self.
So my suggestion to you is to go out on a the next big pow day, and just give it a try. It was a blast.
.joe out.
Also you can read my report, and see some photos form fernie at
http://blogs.fernie.com/localsreport/2009/03/04/fernies-skiing-like-whistler/
Feb 17, 2009 I’ve been volunteering as a developer for Christmas Future, a local charity founded by my good friend Jay Baydala a few years back, for quite some time. What with my return to the world of working etc etc, I have decided to put about 4 - 8 hours a week into doing a bit of CFoo work.
My current project is building up a small REST API to expose a bit of the data in the DT core to outside developers. Though in this case those outside developers will also be me. I (and Charlie Godsoe) will be using this API to build up a few widgets that will be plugable to all your favorite social networking apps (Facebook, Blogger, MySpace etc) as well as a Dashboard widget and a Vista Gadget.
So all in all there is lots on the go here in C town, so stay tuned, as I finally have something developer-ey to blog about.
.joe
Feb 13, 2009 Alas my running has been put on hold as I hurt my ankle on monday. I think it’s I aggravated a sprain from earlier in the year, but hopefully it will be back to normal some time next week and I’ll be able to get back on it.
.joe
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