February 2012
23 posts
Homebrew and Xcode 4.3
Now that the default directory for Xcode is /Applications, Homebrew may not be too happy.
Error: No developer directory found at /Developer.
Fix this by first ensuring you have the command line tools installed (Xcode > Preferences > Downloads > Components > Command Line Tools), then running the following command:
sudo xcode-select -switch...
Suggested Viewing Order →
If you are showing someone the official editions of Star Wars for the first time, you have to make a decision about which order to show the films.
This makes so much sense.
Just a thermostat. →
Complexity is easy. It’s fun to come up with new ideas and it feels great to say yes to everything, to avoid making trade-offs.
It’s simplicity that’s hard. To make a great product, you have to define its core – a single challenge – and painfully, painstakingly eliminate creative features to stay true to the product and its purpose.
What else would one expect?
What’s the waiter doing with the computer screen? →
“The guys that create these kinds of systems … they have …. Well, you can’t do things the way you wanna do them. You can check off a reservation in the system, with the mouse, but hey, it’s at least four clicks away from this screen. And you can’t tell if the guests have been showed to their table or are waiting in the bar. So it’s much easier just to draw on the screen. (And when the...
Rails Went Off The Rails →
Rails is old and busted; Node.js is the new hotness. But people hate Node.js because of “the hype.” This amuses me, because the only things I know about the hype around Node.js come from people who hate Node for that hype.
I will freely admit to knowing next-to-nothing about Node.js, but I’m also a big ‘use what you know’ guy. I know Rails, I know how to make it do what I...
Force rbenv to find rails →
If your system seems to think rails isn’t installed when you know for a fact it is, you might see something like the following error:
`Rails is not currently installed on this system. To install it, run sudo apt-get install rails.`
Don’t. Instead, try the following:
`$ gem install railties && rbenv rehash`
Use Pow with rbenv →
In ~/.zshenv:
`export PATH="/Users/username/.rbenv/shims:/Users/username/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"`
Restart Pow. Done.
Why we don't trust retainCount →
Graham Lee on a specific example of why you should never, ever rely on -retainCount for anything.
Why this method is still public baffles me.
Do Things, Tell People. →
If you you don’t have any marketable skills, learn some. It’s the future. We have Khan Academy and Wikipedia and Codecademy and almost the entire world’s collective knowledge at your fingertips. Use it.
Then make something that you can talk about. Make something cool. Something interesting. Spend time on it. Go crazy. Even if it’s the least useful thing you’ve ever made, if you can talk...
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man...”
– Citizenship in a Republic, Theodore Roosevelt, April 23 1910
The Piracy Threshold →
The vast majority of people are happy to buy your stuff, but only if you’re reasonable about it. £10 for a movie isn’t reasonable; it’s greedy. People don’t feel that’s the right price. We’re not asking to get things for free, but we’re not willing to be fucked.
iOS vs Mac →
The iOS platform overtook the OS X platform in under four years and more iOS devices were sold in 2011 (156 million) than all the Macs ever sold (122 million
The Evolution of Piezo (Christa/Piezo) →
Worth a read, if only for the first footnote.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note Is the Most Useless Phone... →
Just focus on a quality product, and you won’t have to release eight “flagship” models a year.
On privacy, hashing, and your customers →
Try not to be a dick; check that you’re not being a dick; be less of a dick.
Jeff Atwood leaving Stack Exchange →
Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have been wildly successful, but I finally realized that success at the cost of my children is not success. It is failure.
I doubt there’s a single developer out there today whose job - life - hasn’t been improved by Stack Exchange.
Inside Stripe →
Stripe’s aim, the cofounders agree, is to make accepting payments online as simple as embedding a YouTube video.
I’d argue Stripe don’t want to be the next PayPal. They want to be better.
I can’t wait till these guys launch in the UK.
Github's Zach Holman on The Apple Voice →
Most startups don’t have the luxury of meeting every one of their customers. They can’t explain the case for their product in-person.
Instead, we market our product with words. We craft those words with our voice.
Honeywell goes after Nest Learning Thermostat for... →
U.S. Patent No. 7,634,504 - this patent was filed in 2006 (issued 2009) and covers displaying grammatically complete sentences while programming a thermostat.
It is utterly incomprehensible that such a patent could ever be issued.
Race to drill into Antarctic lake →
Is this not how horror films start?
Apollo 11 Launch at 500 Frames per Second →
Apple developer documentation viewer for iOS →
Giving this a try. Seems quick and stable thus far. Downloads a copy of whichever docsets you choose, so it also works offline. It’s currently restricted to publicly available docsets, so no beta docs. Open-source and BSD-2 licensed.
Egypt football violence leaves many dead in Port... →
74 dead and the first adjective out of your mouth is ‘unfortunate’?