Curiouser and Curiouser!Curiouser and Curiouser is the weblog of Matt Mower. I love developing software in Ruby and Objective-C. I'm also a budding libertarian.So long svn- June 30, 2008 For the last several weeks Alan and I have been working on reeplay.it using git-svn. This is a hack that allows a developer to maintain a Git repository that commits back to an upstream Subversion repository. This gave us the most of the nifty benefits of Git without replumbing both our repository and deployment processes. But like all hacks there are downsides. git-svn is clever but, for example, last night I had a nasty merge following by Segmentation fault and Bus error messages as git-svn..http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002874.html Jump into Kiva- June 28, 2008 As I've mentioned before I have been loaning to small businesses via Kiva for a couple of years now. A few days ago I made my 17th loan which was to a group of women in Uganda trying to raise $1,825. The way Kiva works they expire any loan that doesn't reach it's target inside 30 days (refunding the credit to the Kiva lenders). There are 5 more days in which lenders can pledge the last $300 of their loan. If you've ever wanted to try Kiva out now might be a good opportunity. I loaned them...http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002873.html Hard going- June 26, 2008 I've spent about an hour this evening looking at the Apple developer documentation trying to figure out how to play music. By that I mean how to play musical notes through the (presumed) software synthesizer. I did this quite easily a few years ago with JavaSound but I'm not making much headway here. Even by Apple standards the documentation is terse and opaque. Just to clarify that last statement I don't mean to suggest that Apple docs are especially bad but they're often little more than a...http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002872.html Only murder: so that's okay then- June 25, 2008 I was reading a piece about some stupid law-suit over whether GTA SA had some sex scenes in it and these comments popped out at me: "I'm aware that there is killing in the game," Ms. Stanhouse said in the deposition. "I wasn't aware of the stealing." and "Well, I think he does have games with violence," Ms. Stanhouse said, adding that she would "possibly" buy such a game - though not one that contained sex scenes like those in San Andreas. So it's okay for her kid to murder...http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002871.html That just about sums them up- June 24, 2008 Don't ask me how but I ended up, through a long chain of associations, watching Steve Balmers wonderfully predictive reaction to the iphone: In it he scoffs at the iPhone then starts talking about Windows Mobile and the Motorola Q-phone and says: "You can get err a Motorola Q phone now for 99 dollars. It's a very capable machine. It'll do music. It'll do internet. It'll do email. It'll do instant messaging. So I kind of look at that and I say 'Well. I like our strategy. I like it a...http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002870.html Why I won't be using FF3 for Mac- June 23, 2008 Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002869.html On Ruby Metaprogramming- June 22, 2008 I have just finished the 5th and (presently) last installment of Dave Thomas series of screencasts on The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming. Here is my capsule summary: If you write even moderately complicated Ruby programs and you are not Josh Susser or Ryan Davis then you should rush out and buy these videos. I consider myself a reasonably seasoned Ruby programmer who has done some metaprogramming before and yet I found much to like about each episode where it either taught me...http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002868.html Our society is doomed- June 22, 2008 I think, as a measure of the advancement of society, we could look at the perceived requirement for (and tolerance of) coercion: As Harry Binswanger says so memorably, the symbol of political power is the gun. The symbol of economic power is the dollar. The only power a business has to induce customers to give it money is the value of its products. If a business started to produce an inferior product, it would eventually lose its customers. By contrast, the only power...http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002867.html Why software patents shouldn't be allowed... 110- June 20, 2008 This kind of ass-hattery is a good start: SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 0007The present invention provides a system and method for dynamically generating a privacy summary. In a method according to one embodiment of the invention, a profile for a user is generated. One or more privacy setting selections are received from the user associated with the profile. The profile associated with the user is updated to incorporate the one or more privacy setting selections. A privacy summary is.http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002866.html |