Author Archives: Angus Hardie

Multi-touch – finger tips wearing out?

I seem to be using more multi-touch stuff, but I do have this irrational fear that my finger tips will slowly start to wear away from constantly dragging them over metal or glass surfaces …  

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Russian Documentary about Bread Day

Years ago I saw a documentary about Russians living in the country side where the local people had to push, by hand, a railway wagon filled with bread. I could never find any trace of it later, but today I … Continue reading

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More modifier keys

I was working on the new labels panel in SQLEditor when I realised that I’d run out of modifier keys for clicking shortcuts. Tables already use several of the standard keys for selection control, leaving pretty much only option/alt remaining, and I’d … Continue reading

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Cancom Edinburgh Apple shop seems to be closed

Cancom seems to have closed their Edinburgh shop after being bought out by Trams. Sorry about staff 🙁

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Digital Camera Teardown

Here is a video showing a breakdown of a lumix digital camera. (mikeselectricstuff/YouTube) The amazing thing is how small the mechanical parts are, and how many there are in there. This camera probably costs no more than £200, yet there are minuscule parts … Continue reading

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Kodak bankrupt?

Kodak, perhaps the photography company, appears to have filed for bankruptcy. It seems to be something of a representative for the state of the non-digital photography market, which looks pretty much dead except for a few limited areas. In recent … Continue reading

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The Web Development Kit Bundle

Just hours remain to buy the The Web Development Kit Bundle. It’s got a useful mix of tools for Mac web development and its an excellent bargain even if you’re only looking for one or two items in the bundle. … Continue reading

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Web Development Toolkit

HTMLValidator is one of the apps in the new Web Development Toolkit bundle, which is available now. The bundle contains 10 apps for a single low price of just $39.99 If you’re doing web design, there’s probably something here for … Continue reading

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Versions, validateMenuItem: and NSMenuItem

If you find when developing in 10.7 that you get a versions menu with a NSMenuItem as one of the items, it might be worth checking to see whether you’re correctly using validateMenuItem: This problem may happen if you return … Continue reading

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Runesoft updates games for Lion

Last year I bought  “Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood”; it’s a fun, 3d person, tactical combat game where you play Robin Hood or one of his merry men in the fight against the sheriff of Notingham. When I bought … Continue reading

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Flash player updating on Mac

Flash Player on the Mac is always in need of an update – or so it seems. One particular problem is that the current update checking system seems to merely displays a web page with the current version numbers. That … Continue reading

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SQLEditor upgrades

One of the big questions I’ve been thinking about recently is how to price upgrades for SQLEditor. So far upgrades have all been free as 1.0 became 1.1 and eventually 1.7. But with the new 2.0 release appearing soon, the … Continue reading

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Xcode 4 – Great!

Xcode 4 took a little while to get used to, but as I’ve been using it more, I’ve been liking it more. The change initially is significant, and there were new ways of doing things and certain other things that … Continue reading

Posted in Macintosh, Writing Software | 2 Comments

Lion Released

Lion is released! Things seem to be going well. SQLEditor appears to work correctly. There is one identified issue which means that you cannot register the app for all users of a machine. Each user must register the app separately … Continue reading

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SQLEditor and OS X 10.7/Lion

The release of OS X 10.7 Lion is approaching very fast and the question must be: is SQLEditor compatible? The answer is that I expect that SQLEditor will be compatible with OS X 10.7 when it is released in July. … Continue reading

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MySQL 5.5 + Ruby + Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6

The trick is that the library install path isn’t right in the gem bundle. The following commands fixed it for me: $ cd /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.8.1/lib $ sudo install_name_tool -change libmysqlclient.18.dylib /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.18.dylib mysql_api.bundle $ cd /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.8.1/ext $ sudo install_name_tool -change libmysqlclient.18.dylib /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.18.dylib … Continue reading

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Talk Talk Door step selling

A truly remarkable piece of door step selling occurred to me this afternoon. Three people turned up at my door, claiming to be from Talk Talk, complete with ID badges. (So possibly genuine?) I said I wasn’t interested, but one … Continue reading

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SQLEditor Diff Support: A Sneak Peak

Development work is continuing on SQLEditor, and I thought I’d post a sneak peak of some features that will be arriving fairly soon. Today the feature is Diff support. Yes, it’s something that people have been asking for and something … Continue reading

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Adobe and Growl

I recently spotted the following line in an online forum by a person associated with the Growl notification system. I’m tired of being yelled at and having my life threatened, but that’s at least better than being insulted like this. … Continue reading

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SQLEditor now zip file not a dmg

In a change that will probably affect almost nobody at all, SQLEditor is now being distributed with a zip file rather than a dmg as the default download. Why? Zip files are simpler to create It prevents the problem of … Continue reading

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