Software & stuff

Jing security warning for Flash Player (on Mac)

Every time I captured video using Jing (on a Mac) I was presented with a dialog prompting me to change security settings. Clicking the buttons on the dialog did not help. I poked around on the internet and, after a while, found the solution.

Go to Adobe's FlashPlayer security console, choose 'Edit Locations', choose 'Add Location' and navigate to your Applications directory. Choose the app that spawned the dialog.

Cocos2d get parent UIViewController for EAGLView

The problem: You need access from Cocos2d to the UIViewController hosting the OpenGL EAGLView. 

I found the solution outside of the Cocos2d community. You can find the original on StackOverflow.

The summary is "look up the UIResponder chain." Here's the code: 

 

for( UIView* next = [theEAGLView superview];  next; next = next.superview){
  UIResponder *nextResponder = [next nextResponder];
  if([nextResponder isKindOfClass:[TheUIViewControllerYouWant class]]){
    TheUIViewControllerYouWant *uic = (TheUIViewControllerYouWant*)nextResponder;
    [uic theThingYouWantToDo];
  }
}

 

I apologize for the horrendous formatting. I clearly need a new blog host.

 

Git: bulk-remove deleted files from repo

Rather than doing "git rm" for lots of files, use the snippet here: http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/5669 

Modular Google Apps Script UiApp

Found a good sample on the forums of something I had a hard time finding in the API reference or other docs. 

Posted a script on GitHub that allows you to add/remove controls for a UiApp in the callbacks attached to buttons.

iOS Facebook Integration

Just finished some iOS stuff integrating the Facebook SDK. Prior to an upcoming demo, we wanted to refactor the flow and I was poking around to see what the internet had to say about architectural approaches. Found a great blog post by the implementers of a GPS-based game called "Hazards". Rather than rehash it, I thought I'd link off to it to bump their search score. :)

There was a really nice helper class posted on StackOverflow that you should check out as well. 

 

XCode 4, Facebook API on iOS fix

Grabbed the iOS SDK for Facebook integration from github, ran the DemoApp (after allowing XCode to upgrade the project) and it bombed. Redirection was failing. 

Made 2 Facebook apps just to verify that was the problem. Turns out the docs are a little vague on what to do to integrate the SDK. Found the solution on StackOverflow.

Too bad StackOverflow didn't give me an option to thank that guy for the answer. The solution was "remove everything in the square brackets and also the brackets themselves and replace them with your Facebook AppID."

Hewlett/Packard quotes

Just linking to a set of 10 quotes I found insightful and meaningful. Very applicable. Thanks to Phil McKinney for posting them.

"Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX" Chapter 10 in XCode 4 won't open my files

XCode's UI was heavily refactored in XCode 4. I'm working through some examples from Big Nerd Ranch's "Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX (3rd Ed)" and hit a stumbling block with the RaiseMan exercise. I thought I'd share the solution.

In that exercise you'll associate a file extension (".rsmn") with files your app saves. Your app will auto-save at this point, and should be able to reopen files you previously saved or auto-saved. 

I followed the directions in the book and took into account XCode's new UI, but that was a recipe for massive fail-sauce. After debugging things, reading through docs on particular deprecated functions, the solution was simple. "Do not use an identifier." I'm sure identifiers are useful, but using one broke the heck out of my project. 

If you've done this, go back to your Info screen for the RaiseMan target and delete all Document Types, Exported UTIs and Imported UTIs you've created, then rebuild & run. Your app should work again. Now go back to the Info screen for your RaiseMan target, add a document and populate only the Name, Class, Extension and Icon fields. Do not populate the identifier. 

After completing this step, your app will both save and open files with the ".rsmn" extension.

Disable the "Reading Untagged Document" dialog in Adobe Reader 10.0 (and maybe other versions)

I'm repeating Said Eloudrhiri's blog post about this issue. Hopefully it'll improve search results for his page. The fix works, but I didn't find his post right away. 

I had an issue where Adobe Reader's accessibility dialog opened every time I opened a PDF in Adobe Reader (standalone or browser plugin). It grew to be annoying, a bit like a young child asking you the same question over and over. I found no setting to disable that dialog. 

The fix is unfortunate:

Locate the installation folder for Adobe Reader

1. Cut the Accessibility.api & ReadOutLoud.api files from the plug_ins directory 
2. Make a new folder to store those plugins in ('just in case'), and ensure that folder is not inside the plug_ins directory
3. Paste the Accessibility.api & ReadOutLoud.api files into that new directory
4. Close all instances of Adobe Reader (inlcuding web browser tabs displaying PDFs)

Now you're set. Open a PDF and you will no longer be prompted.

Mac man pages in pdf

Nice command sequence. Pipe man pages to the Preview application so you can view them in PDF. 

Replace the "ls" below with whichever command you want to display.

man -t ls | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app