Reading Christopher McDougall’s highly interesting and inspirational “Born to Run”, I came back to my idea of running (semi-)barefoot. Turns out there are a lot of people with the same idea, and companies catering to this idea. So last Thursday I treated myself to a new pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSO. (My new Vibram FiveFingers KSO) VFF are basically what you would get if you dipped your feet into molten rubber, minus, you know, the excrutiating pain, blistering skin and earache caused by your own frantic screaming.

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Last night I’ve released a new version of Ephemera, my 2-way Instapaper /ebook-reader sync tool for Mac. Here’s what’s new: NEW: The app runs on both 32 and 64 bit Snow Leopard now. NEW: When auto-sync is enabled and you plug in your reading device, Ephemera will show a “Going to sync…” dialog for 5 seconds, where you can temporarily disable syncing. NEW: Support for password-less Instapaper accounts. FIX: Preferences menu item will be correctly disabled during sync.

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This post references MacRuby 0.5, used with Xcode 3.2 on Snopard (10.6.2); the general technique will likely work on other OS/Xcode version, tho. Just saying. Apps with more than just one framework The standard MR app template massages $LOAD_PATH a bit in order to have apps which embed the MR framework use said embedded framework in Release builds. The piece of code in question looks like this: if Dir.exist?(NSBundle.mainBundle.privateFrameworksPath) $:.map! { |x| x.

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This post references MacRuby 0.5, used with Xcode 3.2 on Snopard (10.6.2); the general technique will likely work on other OS/Xcode version, tho. Just saying. At some point in my project I needed to access OSX' Keychain to store sensitive userdata. Unfortunately, due to the lack of void pointers in MacRuby 0.5 (see Trac ticket), I couldn’t use standard methods like SecKeychainAddGenericPassword. The guys on the mailing list told me to use a wrapper instead.

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I’ve built my first Mac app: Ephemera, which offers two-way Instapaper.com sync for your ebook reader. Here’s its story, my motivation, and what it does. Preface Ephemera is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with Instapaper.com or Marco Arment. I’m just a huge fan. How it came to be A few months ago, in Oct or Nov 2009, about an hour after getting my Kindle 21 I just knew that it would be the perfect device to read my news on.

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This post references MacRuby 0.5b2, used with Xcode 3.2 on Snopard (10.6.2). At some point you’ll probably want to create a release build for your app. You’d like to compile it and embed the MacRuby framework so the app is self- contained. Cool beans. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it seems. Yes, the MacRuby Xcode template contains both an “Embed” and a “Compile” target, and they seem to work fine.

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Some things I’ve learned or discovered during the last few days. Nothing special, but taking notes is usually a good idea, so there. Get values fromInfo.plist For example, app name and version: info = NSBundle.mainBundle.infoDictionary info.objectForKey("CFBundleName") info.objectForKey("CFBundleVersion") Open an URL in the default browser: url = NSURL.URLWithString("http://municode.de/") NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace.openURL(url) Run an AppleScript Sometimes you want to execute a short AppleScript snippet to save yourself some time by using the higher-level functionality AS offers instead of writing a huge block of MacRuby.

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Just a note, mostly to myself: The default XCode MacRuby rb_main.rb template will contain these lines: Dir.entries(dir_path).each do |path| if path != File.basename(__FILE__) && path.match(/\.rb$/) require(path) end end Works fine for uncompiled files, but when you want to compile your app, there’ll be no *.rb files — just *.rbo files. So rb_main.rb needs to be adjusted. Dir.entries(dir_path).each do |path| if path != File.basename(__FILE__) && path.match(/\.rbo?$/) require(path) end end I just spent 15 minutes wondering about these Unknown class 'Controller', using 'NSObject' instead.

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What They Call The “Real Life” 2008 ended with me getting unemployed. The decision being made for me was a catalyst to finally make my move. I was planning to get out of employment in 2009 anyways, so, you know. Thank you, Yahoo!. Early in the year I went freelance. As mentioned, I had played with the idea for a while by then, so that was pretty cool. And scary.

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Somehow, after connecting my new Logitech G9 Laser mouse tonight, two keys on my MS Natural Ergo keyboard were swapped. Highly annoying. After some digging around the Googles, I learned that in order to “reset” your keyboard —i.e. making OSX forget your keyboard type— all you have to do is a rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist Once done, disconnect the keyboard, plug it in again, and the “New keyboard found, wot is it?

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A while ago I’ve decided to do a little time travelling. In literature, that is. So I’ve picked up a novel called “City At World’s End”, written by one Edmond Hamilton. It’s a story about a little rural community in the US heartland having a “super-atomic bomb” go off above it, causing a rift in time, catapulting said city into the far future, and the fight of its citizens to remain on Earth.

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Assaf passed the ball1, and I’m gonna run with it. So Mr Cooper asks “What are your tools of the trade?”. On the desk iMac 24", 3.06 GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, early 2009 model. His name is Rupert, and he’s great. Got him in February after my previous iMac" broke down after running ~3 years straight. Dell 2005FPW. Really nice and affordable monitor. Tilted by 90°, because I can. iPod touch 16GB.

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(What a title…) I was pulling my hair out over the last two days when I was implementing bulk operations in a project of mine. In this case, the list of operations to do in bulk is compiled in the browser, and then the single requests are sent one by one to the server as single AJAX requests. (Think “mark this as read” functionality.) My problem was that the first and second call in the bulk list usually went through well, but the rest of the calls just ran against a wall since all of a sudden Rails had problems finding the either logged in user or was missing certain methods and/or attributes.

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Letzte Woche war ich auf meinem ersten Twittwoch, logischerweise auf dem in München. Da Thomas Pfeiffer, der Organisator, nach Leuten gesucht hatte, die Vorträge halten wollen, hab ich natürlich gleich die Chance ergriffen, etwas über TwerpScan zu erzählen. Der Vortrag lief gut, auch wenn ich mich am Anfang etwas mit der Technik gestritten habe, aber es gab Fragen, Reaktionen und auch Lob von einigen Usern, die meine kleine Site schon kannten.

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Just a heads-up: I’ve moved my blog today — in two ways. First, I’ve ditched my self-hosted Wordpress setup in favor of Tumblr. Because I ♥ Tumblr.1 Second, it’s now sitting on blog.zottmann.org instead of carlo.zottmann.org. Old article URLs 301-redirect to their new locations, so all should be well. Also, I’ve cleaned up the blog history; about 2/3 of the old posts are gone. Most of them either simply lost their context, contained nothing but (now) broken links or are not worth keeping online.

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Yesterday’s Munich on Rails meetup was the usual mix of interesting talks and geeky, delightful conversations. When I say “usual”, I of course mean it’s been the kind of evening I by now kind of expect. ;) Many thanks to Roland for organizing and the Experteers guys for the venue and the food. Nom! Anyways: interesting talks. Marco Otte-Witte presented his Excellent gem (gotta love the name) for static code analysis.

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So, gestern also Bundestagswahl. Durch den Ausgang der Wahl ließ ich mich dann zu folgendem Tweet hinreissen: Bullshitrattenfängergeschwätz funktioniert also immer noch in DE! Glückwunsch an Die Linke & FDP. Gut, das war vielleicht etwas undifferenziert. :p Aber die Wahl macht mir in mehrerlei Hinsicht Magenschmerzen. Ich fürchte, den dringend überfälligen Atomausstieg können wir auf unbestimmte Zeit abhaken, das Thema wird jetzt begraben. Und durch die sicherlich anstehende Laufzeitverlängerung der AKWs werden die Stromversorger sicherlich wenig Muße haben, in erneuerbare Energien zu investieren.

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I’ve made the switch from Leopard to Snow Leopard today. First, I took the necessary steps, of course: checking this handy app compatibility list, running AppFresh, then SuperDuper!. While the overall install went smoothly on my mid-2009 iMac 24", I ran into some issues which I’d like to jot down real quick. Terminal.app has issues with my favourite programming font, Inconsolata. The font isn’t rendered at all, which is a pain.

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Eure Sendungen sind scheisse. Nein, wirklich. Ich meine das nicht böse oder abwertend, sicher nicht. Ich seh nicht oft fern, bin von daher auch sicherlich nicht Teil der werberelevanten Zielgruppe. Aber ich finde, Ihr strengt Euch nicht mehr so an wie früher. Erinnert Ihr Euch noch an die gute alte Zeit? Ihr hattet nur 5 oder 6 Kochshows im Programm; “CSI” lief noch da, wo es hingehört (nämlich bei Euch, nicht bei RTL) und hatte nur 3 Werbepausen und nicht gefühlte 18; Herr Mälzer bereitete auf sehr lockere und durchaus unterhaltsame Art und Weise leckere Speisen aus seiner und anderer Menschen Kindheit zu; das “Perfekte Dinner” war auch noch recht neu und mehr aufs Essen denn auf die Schubladen und wirren Vorlieben der Teilnehmer fixiert; und hin und wieder schneiten Enie van de Meiklokjes und Herr Kühler bei irgendwelchen unbekannten Mitbürgern vorbei und rissen ihnen die Hütte ab.

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Since its birth a few years ago, my Firefox addon BetterSearch has been a fun project. People were using it and seemed mostly happy with it, as they could see a thumbnail of the search results on their favourite search engine before actually clicking through. Good times. This was made possible by displaying preview thumbnails from various sources, such as Amazon’s Alexa service and several others. These thumbnails had to be bought from them, which was financed by money I made as an Amazon affiliate.

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Over the last few years, I have always wondered why there was no site that would allow me to track my progress in World of Warcraft. Sure, there’s the WoW Armory and sites like Raptr, but all these places take more of a “your char right now!” approach which never came close to what I had in mind. And those that did go into the direction I was thinking didn’t click with me.

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A post on the MobileRead forums hinted at my Cybook Gen3 stability issues being related to the font face used for displaying text, so I’ve replaced the very lovely Liberation Serif with the slightly less lovely, but nonetheless enjoyable DejaVu Condensed Serif. Lo and behold, the stability improved tremendously — my Cybook hasn’t crashed once since I’ve switched. So, yes, the crashes/lockups are definitely font issues. The more you know.

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One of the first applications I’ve installed after buying my iPod touch last year was Stanza, one of the few dedicated ebook reading tools for the platform. The idea of electronic reading appeals to me. I’ve tried my luck several times over the last few years, on different devices, with varying success. (Anyone remember Palm? Haha, yeah… me neither.) First of all, I like a good novel. Being able to carry a number of them around with me, wherever I go, is a good thing.

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It happens. I see no point in running Planet Yahoo! anymore, for reasons probably known — i.e. a few months ago Yahoo!’s decided my services as an engineer (and those of my co-workers) were no longer required. Sorry if you were one of the few people finding some value in the aggregation of all these Yahoo! blogs into one big feed.

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This is a reblog of a post from my new Ruby-themed tumblelog. I know it’s kind of cheap to repost your own stuff, but who cares. I’ve spent a couple of hours today pulling my hair out while trying to get one of my background job scripts to work with god, the “easy to configure, easy to extend monitoring framework written in Ruby”. Well, it took a while to make it work, tho.

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