I had the opportunity to speak at PyCon last month in Santa Clara. I’m somewhat of a Python noob, and this was my first PyCon. I found it to be an eye opening experience. I’ve been to many technical conferences, but PyCon had a different vibe to it. There was a greater sense of community [...]
The authenticated save for this file failed (application error code: 20004)
I’m a Mac user, and have been using TextWrangler for a long time as my primary text editor. Today I was editing an Apache config file, and got this error when I tried to save my changes: The authenticated save for this file failed (application error code: 20004) It turns out that the Mac App [...]
xcode 4.3.3 won’t open storyboard’s associated view controller header files
I have a mature project with 5 storyboards, and suddenly started having this problem. Xcode would no longer open associated view controller header files. If I opened them manually, attempting to drag from IB to the view controller header in the editor to make a connection crashed xcode. It happened for each of the 5 [...]
Create a unique identifier (UUID) in objective-c
I’m working on an iPad project for a client and found myself needing to generate a unique identifier. I found some code from Erica Sudan here. Works like a charm. + (NSString *)uuid { CFUUIDRef theUUID = CFUUIDCreate(NULL); NSString *uuidString = (__bridge_transfer NSString *) CFUUIDCreateString(NULL, theUUID); CFRelease(theUUID); [...]
Someone else is fed up, too
I came across this great article on Business Insider: The Ten Most Annoying Management Terms Of 2011 “Reaching out” is the number one most annoying management term of 2011. Finally, someone else stating a strong dislike of the “reaching out” craze. 1 – Reaching out – TMM first came across 2011′s winning term in July [...]
Enough with the reaching out…
I don’t know how phrases get to be so common. I commented previously about my distaste for “no problem” being the nearly universal response to “thank you.” Unfortunately, “no problem” hasn’t lost any steam. I even see it in instant messaging – “np.” Ugh. The newest offender that is approaching universal usage is “reaching out” [...]
How to have the Finder show hidden directories and files
I suppose a lot of the work I do could be called “low level” – tasks such as installing and configuring server applications and frameworks. It bugs me that the Finder doesn’t show ALL of the directories and files on a Mac. For example, lets say I want to work with the /usr/local/bin directory. I’m [...]
Delete .svn folders in OS X
I was working on a project and had copied a directory. I ended up with a Subversion issue because the original directory (and its subdirectories) were under version control. To clean things up, I needed to delete the .svn directories in my new directory and its subdirectories. Here are the steps I took to do [...]
The Yin to the Yang
Some reading I was doing for a graduate course I’m taking got me to thinking about the evolution of electronic commerce. I remember all the hype around it in the late ’90s. “Brick and mortar is dead.” That sort of thing. Oracle had an ad that said something like “The Internet. This changes everything.” Certainly [...]
Segmentation and Paging in the Intel IA-32 Processors
Note: I wrote this as a forum post for one of my graduate courses. I’m sharing it here just in case anyone else finds it interesting. –Ron 16-bit Processors and Segmentation (1978) The IA-32 architecture family was preceded by 16-bit processors, the 8086 and 8088. The 8086 has 16-bit registers and a 16-bit external data [...]
