The iWeb, iMail, iGame and occasionally iPhone
by Erik Runyon on October 25, 2008
I wanted to get in on the iPhone action as soon as v1 came around, but due to budget constraints, that just wasn’t possible. Shortly after the release of the 3G model, a number of stars aligned and I picked up an 8gig 3G. This has turned out to be one my best tech purchases ever. There were several times this summer where the Google map feature helpfully guided myself and others to an elusive destination, and caught Kodak moments when I didn’t have my camera with me.
My only problem with the thing is its name. The irony of the label “iPhone” struck me the other day as I was watching the news with the wife and an iPhone commercial came on. More accurately, I should say I was listening to the news. I was technically reading news feeds and catching up on email. It got me thinking about how much time I spent on this device doing various activities. I’m thinking it breaks down as follows:
Reading news feeds – 70%
Email – 10%
Games – 15%
Other – 4%
Phone – 1%
That one percent may be a little high. It might be that I simply subscribe to too many feeds. All I know is that this handy little device is seriously cutting down on the amount of time I spend sitting at my desk in the evenings. That alone is a wonderful thing.
Rails reference for PHP programmers
by Erik Runyon on April 16, 2008
Back when I first started with Rails, I noticed there were a lot of times I just needed to know the Ruby/Rails equivalent of some PHP function. It started me thinking that it would be great to have a resource similar to PHP.net where you could just append the function name to the end of a url, and get some relevant Ruby/Rails examples. Well, somebody beat me to it.
The folks over at Rails for PHP Developers have a pretty good start on content, especially for Array, String and Filesystem functions. The feature I was planning on, which I am not seeing their site, is a way for the community to contribute. Even if it were heavily moderated, I think it would be a boon for the site to flesh out its reference much more quickly.
The Sound of Freelance…
by Erik Runyon on March 20, 2008
…is silence.
I had the best of intentions. I wanted to give you words. Words to make you laugh. Words to make you cry. Words to excite, enlighten and inspire.
So what happened?
Code. Code happened. I’m up to my eyeballs in freelance work. Many of you know first hand how busy things can get when you work full-time, and also take side jobs. There may be relief soon. My previous employer is finally beefing up his stable of monkey’s. These monkey’s will soon take over the work I’ve been handling since I left the outfit last July. This will hopefully free up some evening time so I can finally write some decent articles. I’m making a list, checking it twice, and will begin authoring soon.
Stay tuned. I plan on doing some small articles soon, as well as a book review.
Maybe.
Leopard Dock Spacers
by Erik Runyon on November 18, 2007
Digital Media Minute has a great bit of terminal magic that allows you to create invisible spacers in the Leopard dock. You can create as many as you like, drag them around, or if you created too many, drag them off.
Only added mine 10 minutes ago and I’m already quite fond.
Leopard Transparent Menu Bar Fix
by Erik Runyon on November 9, 2007
One of the first complaints many voiced when Leopard was released was the transparent menu bar. I am well aware that there are a couple of applications out there that will fix this, but there’s also a rather simple way if you have access to an image editor.
Here’s what my menu bar looked like with the transparency:
Now all you have to do is take your desktop picture and edit it in any graphics program you choose. At the very top, select 21 pixels and fill it with white.
Here’s the result:
You could also add a gradient:
Granted, that last one is a bit subtle, but you could experiment and come up with something much nicer than I did. So there you have it. The transparent menu bar in Leopard doesn’t have to be so bad. Try your own and have fun with it. For those who are curious, here’s a full shot of my desktop.
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