by John C. Bland II | Jul 21, 2011 | OSX
I figure I’ll start blogging more since I’m off Twitter, for the most part, and what better way to kick off blocking again than to talk about my latest “toy”: OSX Lion.
Scrolling is weird on Lion but I truly think with time it will be natural. I get the change though. Everything about Lion is iOS’esque. Look at the animations, Mission Control sliding [aka Spaces 2.0], Launchpad, and scrolling.
In Lion when you slide your finger down on your trackpad or Magic Mouse it pulls the page [or app screen] down. When you slide your finger up it pushes the page up.
It isn’t scrolling, per se. It is more like you’re grabbing the page and moving it in a natural way. If this was a physical page I was writing on write now and wanted to see the bottom, perhaps covered by a book, I would take my finger(s) and push the page up.
That’s how scrolling in Lion works. Apple was bold with the change [I’m sure some folks, including myself initially] ranted about it but I truly think it will become my preference within the next week.
How do you like the scrolling?
by John C. Bland II | Jul 21, 2011 | Android
Simply put…they call it like they see it! This article is about Netflix but they’ve ranted against Google as well. Good stuff!
Editorial: Netflix’s Android rollout an example of a good thing done badly
by John C. Bland II | Jul 20, 2011 | General
Yeah, I’m amped up to start playing NCAA Football 2012. Before I begin I have to get my game tight by having a wallpaper on my backup MacBook Pro [employee uses it mainly but I slide over to it every now and then].
So, I thought I’d share it here as well [as G+]. Let me know what you think. 🙂
by John C. Bland II | Jul 20, 2011 | OSX
I had the hardest time setting up Mura today on my 2008 MacBook Pro. It wasn’t even the fault of Mura, Apache, or Tomcat/Railo but of my hosts file.
This post got me over the hump: Mac OS X Lion /etc/hosts file.
What a weird change. I also hit a wall with some Apache config file changes but I’ll fool w/ those later.
Due to the linked site not working any longer, I am copying the post here. The original post is from Gargoyle’s Blog.
Just doing some early testing with Lion to make sure I can get all my dev environment up and running and have just came along a little quirk.
This is how the default hosts file looks:-
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
Nothin unusual. However, if you are used to adding lines like:-
"127.0.0.1 local-test-app"
to the end of the file, then it might throw you off a little bit as it seems you now have to have them above the fe80::1%lo0 line.
by John C. Bland II | Jul 5, 2011 | PHP
I’ve been using this for years [circa 2002] and in helping a friend with some PHP probs I pulled it out of my code vault to share and figured I should put here.
function dump($var){
print "<pre>" . print_r($var, true) . "</pre>";
} |
function dump($var){
print "<pre>" . print_r($var, true) . "</pre>";
}
This will print an array in a vertical layout as opposed to a horizontal one. Keep in mind there is a pre there [Wordpress isn’t playing nice so replace html equivalent values, lt and gt, with an actual less than/greater than symbol] so you could add a class to it so you can style your debug, float it, or do whatever.
Here is an example of using the file:
function dump($var){
print "<pre>" . print_r($var, true) . "</pre>";
}
dump($_GET); |
function dump($var){
print "<pre>" . print_r($var, true) . "</pre>";
}
dump($_GET);
I put this code in dump.php, loaded https://localhost/dump.php?x=1&y=2&z=3, and here is the output:
Array
(
[x] => 1
[y] => 2
[z] => 3
)
Two great versions came from this function by my friend Guillermo A. Fisher (@guillermoandrae):
/**
* This function prints information about an expression.
* Elevate specialty ;).
* @param mixed expression to be dumped
* @param boolean whether or not to dump detailed information
* @return void
* @access public
*/
function dump($expression, $verbose = FALSE) {
if ($verbose) {
echo('<pre style="text-align:left">' . var_dump($expression) . '</pre>');
} else {
echo('<pre style="text-align:left">' . print_r($expression, TRUE) . '</pre>');
}
}
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------
/**
* This function prints information about an expression and stops script
* execution. Another Elevate specialty.
* @param mixed expression to be dumped
* @param boolean whether or not to dump detailed information
* @return void
* @access public
*/
function fatal_dump($expression, $verbose = FALSE) {
die(dump($expression, $verbose));
} |
/**
* This function prints information about an expression.
* Elevate specialty ;).
* @param mixed expression to be dumped
* @param boolean whether or not to dump detailed information
* @return void
* @access public
*/
function dump($expression, $verbose = FALSE) {
if ($verbose) {
echo('<pre style="text-align:left">' . var_dump($expression) . '</pre>');
} else {
echo('<pre style="text-align:left">' . print_r($expression, TRUE) . '</pre>');
}
}
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------
/**
* This function prints information about an expression and stops script
* execution. Another Elevate specialty.
* @param mixed expression to be dumped
* @param boolean whether or not to dump detailed information
* @return void
* @access public
*/
function fatal_dump($expression, $verbose = FALSE) {
die(dump($expression, $verbose));
}
All of this came out of working with one of my favorite design firms Elevate.
I hope this helps someone. What are your ways of dumping values to debug your pages?
by John C. Bland II | Jul 2, 2011 | Adobe AIR Mobile
I am building a mobile app [will release soon] and Basic auth is required but all the normal approaches were failing on my devices until I started looking through the available UrlRequest properties and wound up finding a gem.
URLRequestDefaults.setLoginCredentialsForHost(host, username, password);
Yes, I’m serious. No more Base64 encoding, appending text, etc to authenticate a UrlRequest. Know this is only for AIR 1.0+ but that means it works for mobile. 🙂
There isn’t anything special required. Just call the method with the appropriate details [host means domain name not protocol (http, https, …), etc]. Peep the docs and enjoy!
by John C. Bland II | Apr 3, 2011 | ColdFusion
For starters, I’m no server guru. I know some things and can get ColdFusion [Adobe/Railo] setup w/ ease but will it be optimal? Nope. This was proven true with a recent launch. I went with a general setup of Apache 2 -> Tomcat [via AJP] w/ Railo.
Most of my problems came, unbeknownst to me, by way of Apache being outdated and using the prefork mpm [opens a whole new Apache to cover requests based on your settings] vs the worker mpm [threaded; opens new threads only, not entire Apaache instances]. 2.2.3 was installed which used an older AJP module and by default used prefork. Simply upgrading to 2.2.16 wasn’t the push of a button or clicking of a few keys because centOS [via Yum] only grabs specific versions; in this case, 2.2.3. With a botched launch and days of outages for the next week+, I spoke with our team about bringing Railo Consulting in to fix things up.
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by John C. Bland II | Mar 5, 2011 | Android
This isn’t an official proposal or anything of structured substance. It is more about a few thoughts on how Google can lock down the Wild West Android Market to better serve its constituents.
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by John C. Bland II | Mar 4, 2011 | Android
This is a follow-up to my Why Android blows away the iOS, for me. post. It covered my basic loves for the things I first saw in Android and loved! All of those points are still valid and honestly I still think Android beats iOS, IMO. (Don’t worry iOS fanboys fans…I’ll briefly explain what I mean shortly.)
After almost a year of use on an HTC Evo, I have come to learn a few things about the Android life. Many of them I love…some I loathe! This post focuses on the loathing part. 😉
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by John C. Bland II | Mar 2, 2011 | General
So, I finally got around to moving the site to @MediaTemple’s (gs) service. I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time but since I commented on @gruber’s posts every now and then I really wanted to just to make sure I didn’t get “fireball’ed” [site crash due to too much traffic]. 🙂 lol.
Jokes aside…I’m a huge fan of @mediatemple and their services. Eventually all of my personal and all @katapultmedia sites will be on @mediatemple.
Aight…1st post on the new service is done. I’ll have a new post up soon w/ details on why I’ve been so quiet. 🙂
by John C. Bland II | Nov 17, 2010 | Blackberry
I’m impressed. BlackBerry devices have never been a desire of mine but I find myself seriously considering putting my Galaxy Tab and iPad desires on hold to see where Blackberry stands price-wise.
What’s most impressive is the Playbook runs on the Adobe AIR runtime. This means AIR developers are 90% prepared to build these apps. I give the other 10% to learning the dev approach [simulator, signing, sdk, etc]. I predict the Playbook as being a big deal very soon.
I wanted to post links to dev resources so you can get started developing or porting current apps to the Playbook:
- Flash Platform Development for BlackBerry Tablet OS [link]
- BlackBerry Developer’s Blog [link]
- Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR [link]
That’s a great start but what is even better is the promotion RIM is running to help entice us to start dev’ing Playbook apps: BlackBerry PlayBook Developer Promotion Information. Here is the skinny on the promotion:
“…the plan is to provide one free BlackBerry PlayBook to every registered vendor with a BlackBerry App World-approved AIR application that is available for the BlackBerry PlayBook prior to launch.”
Now, who says the Flash Platform is going to die? 😉 Rock on RIM!
by John C. Bland II | Nov 10, 2010 | Writing
IT’S ALIVVVVVVVE! 😀 Go get it!
Writing is a beast. It is truly a long road but it is well worth it for this moment right here [well…royalty checks aren’t bad either; lol].
This book will enhance your knowledge. There is some really great information in there to pull your Flex 4 skills to top notch. The goal is to take you from Beginner to Winner in ~25 chapters.
If you’d like to discuss the book, visit the forum.
Also check Dan Orlando’s thoughts on the release.
by John C. Bland II | Nov 10, 2010 | Android, Apple
I’m in [tech] love with my Evo 4G [Android phone on Sprint] but I ask myself this question often. What would be your answer?
Typically my question is more like this:
“If iOS allowed Flash and Adobe AIR, would you leave Android?”
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by John C. Bland II | Nov 5, 2010 | Silverlight
I won’t cover all of the details because I think they have been specified perfectly by ScottGu and Tim Heuer.
Turns out…my thoughts in the previous post seem to be where MSFT sits as well.
by John C. Bland II | Oct 29, 2010 | Android, Flash Platform, Silverlight
I seriously never liked the whole Silverlight vs Flash and now don’t like the Flash vs HTML 5 arguments out there but Microsoft’s [MSFT] announcement strikes a familiar chord with me. I’m seeing this from a different perspective since I’m not a Silverlight developer by default [only if you pay me to do it].
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