Archive for January, 2006

RubyUniversal 1.8.4

Thursday, January 26th, 2006

I've put together a Universal (i.e. runs on both ppc and i386 architectures) binary version of ruby, intended for developers of Ruby apps who want to ensure that their applications run on both old and new Macs. It's only really going to be useful to those people who write ruby code ...

I don’t like censorship.

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006

Google is offering a censored internet search service to China. This is certainly a compromise which has drawn Google a lot of flak because, frankly, it's a sucky decision to have to make. But is this any difference to the censorship Google already applies in France and Germany (censoring porn ...

iWork. iLife. Anticipating greatness.

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006

There's some hubbub on the 'net at the moment about how it is easy to use iWeb, part of iLife '06, to create web sites, blog entries and podcasts/photocasts/videologs. There's a little bit of complaint that the use of HTML/CSS isn't completely perfect. Scott Stevenson says "I'm pretty impressed.". Scott ...

Source code obfuscation

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006

I spent a lot of time reading through methods of source code obfuscation today, particular for Ruby. With Objective-C, there is immediately one layer of obfuscation, as the code gets compiled to a binary format which is generally not human readable. Ruby, however, is plain text. This ...

Windows is hard! Mac OS is hard!

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

Computers are simply way too hard. I spent some time this evening helping a well educated adult get a driver for her printer. Nightmare. In the end I went to the website, downloaded the driver and sent it over instant messenger. Then was the fun of getting her to run it. ...

RubyCocoa OK to bundle

Sunday, January 22nd, 2006

I've been working on an application that involves using the RubyCocoa framework, and I was worried about the commercial reality of distributing the application. RubyCocoa is released under the LGPL, something I think is a bit open to interpretation. So, I got in touch with Fujimoto Hisa, who ...

what would you build?

Sunday, January 22nd, 2006

Let's say you're a software developer. You're busting for a bit of independent software development action. What to build, you think. What great idea would put you on the map. I spent a bit of time this week talking to some software developers and I'm just drawing from the conversation. ...

What can we find out about you?

Saturday, January 21st, 2006

Om Malik has a good article on "Living a Cached Life". I used to while away the boredom of being on a Mac help-desk (there were never many calls and yes, there were nearly a hundred users..) by looking things up (wasn't Altavista the rage back then?). I used to be the ...

Change Your Life. Do it. Now.

Friday, January 20th, 2006

Chanced upon this blog entry about "why you shouldn't put up with a job you hate". The hosts friend believed he would "never be happy unless I'm making a living as a musician". Her reply to him was: "Well," I said, "you might as well go for it, then. The worst ...

Mac web browser idea

Friday, January 20th, 2006

"The internet experience for the average Mac user is a little different than for the average Windows user. For a start, Mac users have tabs, which sit on top (or at the side) of the browser and take up space without being truly useful. Mac users like to talk about ...