Portfolious

Well it finally happened. Monday, August 1st, I released my application, Keymando. A little over two years in the making, after many long nights, it’s finally for sale in the Mac App store.
Keymando began as a simple global hotkey mapping utility that allow users to use vi-like hjkl navigation instead of arrow keys. Initially called “ViKing” because of its vi user focus, it grew into an entire key mapping and automation tool poised to completely change the way you get things done on the Mac.

If you’re trying to upload your MacRuby application to the Mac App Store and get the following error:

Package “com.your.app.id”: Bundle at “YourApp.app/Contents/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework” in Payload not declared in Package info

I recently decided to get rid of my Fluid instances of websites like Gmail and Remember the Milk. The primary reason I used them like stand alone apps was because I could quickly switch between them using my app launcher of choice, Quicksilver. However, now that I’m using Chrome for these sites there was no way to quickly access them without cycling through a bunch of tabs.

Enter the Chrome Duplicate Tab Detector extension. This extension will open the tab of the site you’re trying to access if it is already present. There was one hitch with the current functionality which was that the url of the existing tab and the one you were opening had to match exactly. This wouldn’t work for sites like Gmail that append parameters to the url when changing folders or composing mail.

So I forked the code, made the small change to fix this, and made it available here:

https://github.com/downloads/kevincolyar/chrome-duplicate-tab-detector/chrome-duplicate-tab-detector.crx

Thanks to mbhutton for creating the original chrome extension.

UPDATE: Now ignores # style parameters like http://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2Ffailblog

If you’re using vim in iTerm2 on your Mac, make sure you select ‘xterm-256color’ in the Report Terminal Type under Terminal Emulation.  This will let vim know that you’re using a terminal capable of 256 colors.

Tonight I decided to give iCuke a try but I couldn’t find any good getting started guides.  iCuke is a BDD gem for cucumber that enables integration testing for the iPhone.  I’m familiar with using cucumber with Rails so getting going wasn’t terribly difficult but thought the pre-reqs should be a little more clear.

Here are five simple steps for getting started:

Step 1: Setup directories

$ cd path/to/your/iphone/app
$ mkdir features
$ cd features
$ mkdir support step_definitions

Step 2: Create cucumber.yml with the following content:
default: -r support -r step_definitions .

Step 5:  Create app.feature with the following content:

Background: 
  Given "MyApp" from "../MyApp.xcodeproj" is loaded in the simulator
Scenario: User views the Home screen
  When I tap "Home"
  Then I should see "Welcome"

Here’s a quick way to show your path in Finder windows.  Open a Terminal window and enter the following:

To enable:

$ defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
$ killall Finder

To disable:

$ defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool NO
$ killall Finder

If you’re using Selenium with Cucumber on a Mac you probably know that Firefox 3.5.3 is that latest version that works with Selenium. I was getting fed up with not being able to update to the latest version of Firefox so here’s what I did. Simply install Firefox 3.5.3 (the latest Selenium compatible browser at the time of this writting) and name it /Applications/Firefox-3.5.3.app

This will be the Firefox installation Selenium will use and now you’re free to upgrade your /Applications/Firefox.app install.

Now add the following code to your RAILS_ROOT/features/environments/selenium.rb file.

Don’t forget to do this hack:

$ cd /Applications/Firefox-3.5.3.app/Contents/MacOS
$ mv libsqlite3.dylib _libsqlite3.dylib


For more help setting up Cucumber and Selenium, check my other post Setting Up Cucumber to Use Webrat and Selenium with Rails.

The following is a list of tools that I use on a daily basis to support my way of Getting Things Done:

• Remember the Milk – My main inbox and list manager.
• Concentrate – My Pomodoro timer for bursts of highly concentrated work.
• Wallet notepad and mini pen – For writing down “stuff” that comes to mind.
• MacVim – Text Editor for editing files of projects, goals, and accomplishments.
• Dropbox – For syncing project files and folders between multiple computers.
• Two Tray Inbox – One tray for incoming and one for ‘to read’.
• Pen and paper – For mind mapping and collecting.
• Books, Blogs, and Audiobooks – For sharpening the axe.

A month or so ago I needed to connect a Rails site to an Oracle database from cygwin, osx, and linux (both 32 and 64 bit).

I’ve release the fruits of my labors as a collection of rakes files for each OS on github:

http://github.com/kevincolyar/ruby_oracle_libs/tree/master

Hopefully this will help someone else out.  Feel free to fork and let me know of any updates and improvements that are needed.

In an effort to force myself to use the keyboard more, I’ve turned off the trackpad on my Mac Book Pro.  I did this by opening the Trackpad section in System Preferences and checked the ‘Ignore trackpad when mouse is present’ option, plugging in a usb mouse, and finally hiding the mouse out of reach.