Arjan’s tumblelog

"The art of the connection is the end result of a nerd’s highly obsessive due diligence performed on..."

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:30:51 +0200

“The art of the connection is the end result of a nerd’s highly obsessive due diligence performed on anything that falls into the relevant bucket.”

- Michael Lopp

"Quit iTunes 10, and enter defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1 in a Terminal prompt...."

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:56:28 +0200

“Quit iTunes 10, and enter defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1 in a Terminal prompt. Relaunch iTunes and—voilà!—the standard window controls return.”

- Chris Foresman at ars technica

"[anthropologist Susan D. Blum] contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a..."

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:19:35 +0200

“[anthropologist Susan D. Blum] contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.”

- Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age - NYTimes.com

Indonesian deforestation exposed

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:00:48 +0200

Indonesian deforestation exposed:

A Greenpeace aerial survey reveals an area of deforestation in Sumatra stripped for pulp and palm oil plantations and logging (from The Guardian)

IE6 and CSS media types

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:35:00 +0200

When trying to reduce the number of HTTP requests on a web project I was working on, I tried to combine my screen and print stylesheets into a single file. Using the @media declaration, one should be able to specify media-specific styles. Other browsers were ok, but as usual IE6 was playing up. My @media print block was completely ignored.

The setup

First, I had only generic rules and a single print block, like so:

body { font-size: 12px }
@media print {
    body { font-size: 14pt }
}

Then, I included the stylesheet on my page with a media type:

As I understood the specs all generic styles (outside the @media print block) should apply to the media specified in the link, while the print-specific styles should apply only to the print media type.

The solution

It seems the media type from the link overrides the @media print block in IE6, so removing that un-ignored those styles:

Then, in order to keep my generic styles (which are actually screen-only styles) from influencing my print styles, I used another @media block:

@media screen {
    body { font-size: 12px }
}
@media print {
    body { font-size: 14pt }
}

All was well and both my screen and print styles were picked up nicely. Now I could use one single stylesheet and remove one additional HTTP request, speeding up the site loading time.

Modifying Subversion commit messages

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:40:37 +0200

Sometimes when I try to quickly repeat my last command in the terminal, I end up firing off a svn commit. Unlike with Git, you cannot modify commits in Subversion, but you can modify a revision’s properties — like the log message.

Here’s how:

svn propedit --revprop -r 1234 svn:log

This will open your $EDITOR and it lets you edit the log message for the specified commit (1234).

Note: in order to make this work, you repository needs to be configured correctly. This means you should rename /path/to/your/repo/hooks/pre-revprop-change.tmpl to /path/to/your/repo/hooks/pre-revprop-change and chmod +x it.

Using relatedTarget in event handlers

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:53:00 +0200

Here’s a nice trick for working with mouse events in a web page. Given a simple drop down menu, I used to use a timer to delay the closing of a submenu while the mouse travels from the menu title to the sub menu (where it nog longer hovers over the menu title, that had the original event handler). The timer going off would hide the submenu, unless the mouse entering the submenu fired a new event handler that would reset the timer.

So, yeah, that wasn’t ideal.

I learned the other day that, given adjacent element you can actually use event.relatedTarget to get to the element the mouse travels to when leaving the element that fired the mouseout event. Neat!

Now you can check for the target element and do all kinds of nifty stuff, and get rid of all timers. They sucked anyway.

Example jQuery code:

$('nav a').mouseout(function(e) {
    var submenu = $('.submenu', this.parentNode);
    if(e.relatedTarget != submenu) {
        submenu.slideUp();
    }
});

Quick text manipulation with Ruby

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:18:36 +0200

Here’s a nice trick I like to use to quickly transform some random piece of text using Ruby and Textmate:

string = DATA.read
# do stuff here...
__END__
Text to transform goes here

By using the __END__ line you tell Ruby to not executre all that follows, but capture it in an IO which you can read. You can then quickly whip up a script and have Textmate run it using ⌘R. The script’s output can then be copied and pasted.

I use this all the time to transform plain text into HTML, crunch some numbers or filter some text. Think of it as a ‘filter through command’ (⌥⌘R) on steroids.

Here’s a quick example to convert ugly plain-text fractions in an HTML page to pretty entities:

input = DATA.read
{ 
  '1/2' => '½',
  '1/4' => '¼',
  '3/4' => '¾'
}.each_pair do |plain_text, html_entity|
  input.gsub!(/\b#{plain_text}\b/, html_entity)
end
puts input
__END__
1/2 an egg and 1/4 pint of milk

Use Kaleidoscope to spot the differences in text and image...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0200

Use Kaleidoscope to spot the differences in text and image files. I like it better than Changes.

Open Mail window

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:36:14 +0200

Here’s something that has annoyed me ever since I got a Mac: when switching applications using the keyboard (e.g. ⌥-Tab), choosing Mail would not actually open a window if there wasn’t one open already. It seemed this was only good for switching to windows, not applications.

Although this bugged me, I never got round to finding a solution, until now. It struck me that you can switch between mailboxes using ⌘ and a number key. So ⌘1 will actually open my Inbox nicely.

Issues using VCSCommand with MacVim

Wed, 26 May 2010 11:41:46 +0200

I tried to use the VCSCommand-plugin for Vim the other day, but I ran into a strange issue: the plugin tried to use an older version of subversion with my working copy, resulting in “this client is too old” error messages.

The setup

I’ve got two copies of Subversion installed on my system: the default that comes with Mac OS X (1.4.4) and the one I manually installed (1.6.9). I have set my $PATH so that 1.6.9 (in /opt/subversion/bin) gets precedence over 1.4.4 (in /usr/bin). It all works fine from the command line.

The problem

I am using MacVim, which is very nice, but it apparently doesn’t know about my 1.6.9 installation and complains. It appears (from running :!which svn in MacVim) that MacVim (or so it seems any OS X app) ignores my $PATH adjustments in .bash_profile. Hence it is unaware of the /opt/subversion/bin/svn executable.

The fix

I tried adding a file with the extra location to the /etc/paths.d directory, as per this suggestion. That worked but did not help, as it appended rather prepended the new location to MacVim’s $PATH. It gave /usr/bin precedence over /opt/subversion/bin.

I then gave up trying to solve this neatly. Instead I configured the plugin around the issue, which still works rather nicely. I included this line in my .vimrc file:

let VCSCommandSVNExec="/opt/subversion/bin/svn"

This tells the plugin which executable to use. This solution is not very portable (the path to svn may very well be different on other machines), but I have not found another way to solve this. Of course I could mess with my Subversion installations, but down that path madness lies, or so I hear. For now, I’m glad I can get on with it.

"…when Apple ties my hands behind my back and lets users punch me publicly in the face without..."

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:05:19 +0200

“…when Apple ties my hands behind my back and lets users punch me publicly in the face without allowing me to at least respond back, it’s hard to get excited about building an app.”

- Garrett Murray, creator of the awesome ego iPhone app, on how Apple’s App Store is not helping him at all.

Literally, A Web Log

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:26:59 +0100

Literally, A Web Log:

An English language grammar blog tracking abuse of the word “literally”

zsh arguments-fu

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:45:36 +0100

When using Subversion from the command-line I commonly do:

svn copy ^/myproject/branches/FB-branch1 ^/myproject/branches/FB-branch2
svn switch ^/myproject/branches/FB-branch2

This is a lot of typing. One way of working around this a wrapper around svn to automate these patterns, but another is using shell power. I use zsh, but bash and others can do the same with slightly different syntax:

svn copy ^/myproject/branches/FB-branch1 ^/myproject/branches/FB-branch2
svn switch !!:3

Here !!:3 is the third argument of the last command. Neat!

Librarian: There's a problem with this account update. It seems you have changed your default library account password.

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:36:34 +0100

Librarian: There's a problem with this account update. It seems you have changed your default library account password.
Me: yes.
Librarian: ...
Me: I like chaning my passwords every now and then.
Librarian: It's not recommended to change your password. No we cannot update your account.
Me: ...
Librarian: I'll create this extra account for you, and restore its default password. Your password should be the first four digits of your birthday. But don't change it again. It's makes life difficult for all of us.
Me: Ehm… thanks?

Designing for the Web

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:57:46 +0100

Designing for the Web:

Wonderful book, now available online for free.

McDonald's employee: here's your burger. You might want to check if it's still good.

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:51:57 +0100

McDonald's employee: here's your burger. You might want to check if it's still good.
Me: excuse me?
McDonald's employee: you know, try it. I'm not sure if it's still good.
Me: I think I prefer a new one, regardless.
McDonald's employee: why? It might still be okay!

Using Postbox

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:27:12 +0100

I’ve decided to give Postbox a try as my default e-mail client. I love Mail.app’s simplicity, but it has some quirks and I feel I could do better.

Here’s what I like so far:

A sleek interface for tagging (called topics)
Quick browsing of attachments in a folder or from a contact
Archive message immediately with ‘a’
Gmail-style conversation view
Pretty good and quick search
Plug-in potential, although there’s not much available yet.

Here’s what I dislike so far:

No global folders, i.e. one inbox, trash, sent and drafts for all accounts
Topics don’t seem to be IMAP-portable, so you have to apply tags both at home and at work
Message rules can not filter on content, only on message headers
The message composer is bulky
Integration with Mac OS X is not as good as Mail.app
It’s Mozilla-based, not native.

I’m undecided on:

Tabbed interface. I’m not used to it, I don’t need it and I don’t use it. But it might grow on me.
Editing messages: not sure why I’d want to do that.
Facebook and Twitter integration

Postbox does not come for free, while Mail.app and Thunderbird do. So it should really impress be before I switch. I remain unconvinced but hopeful for now.

Attention Deficit Disorder by Ricardo (via gamesdaypodcast)

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:49:54 +0100

Attention Deficit Disorder by Ricardo (via gamesdaypodcast)

Test apache configuration syntax

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:33:25 +0100

Recently my Mac OS X stock install of Apache failed to launch properly. The regular system preferences interface stopped and started Web Sharing without complaining, but I could not find httpd actually running using ps -ax | grep httpd in the terminal.

I was at a loss to explain why, until I found this little gem that you can use to syntax-test your configuration files with: apachectl -t will report on any errors in httpd.conf or any of your other included files.

It appeared that some time ago when I was attempting a manual upgrade of my Subversion install to 1.6.9 some Apache modules were corrupted. As I have no use for them I disabled them.

That did the trick, and now I’ve got my local development environment up and running again.