Everything is Gray

Configure Archive Utility in Mac OS X

James Barclay — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:46:41 +0000

Having recently purchased a new MacBook Pro and electing to skip the option of running Migration Assistant to transfer my data and settings, I noticed that a few applications were behaving differently. Over the years I’ve configured quite a few things on my Mac, and eventually I became accustomed to said customizations. One of the first things I noticed was that when I would unarchive a zip file, the compressed file would stay put. I remembered that a few years ago I learned of a cool way to configure Mac OS X’s built-in Archive Utility, (using a System Preference pane), so I immediately went digging. To do this, simply navigate to therootofyourharddrive/System/Library/CoreServices. From there right or control click on Archive Utility.app, and select “Show Package Contents.” A new window will open containing a folder named Contents, within which you’ll find Resources, and finally Archives.prefPane. Opening this preference pane will result in System Preferences.app asking if you’d like to install for all users or for this user only. Voila! Now you can tell Archive Utility to delete the archive after expanding it.

10 Inspiring Websites

James Barclay — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:57:07 +0000

Lately I’ve been spending quite a bit of time designing websites, whether it’s WordPress theme development or Joomla! template design. A huge part of this process, (for me), is finding inspiration. Below are 10 carefully crafted examples of good web design that I’ve been inspired by as of late.

31THREE

Kyle Florence

A List Apart

Buffalo

Design by Silnt

FullAhead

Viget

thinkdesign

Ed Merritt

ThemeShaper

Webcomics

James Barclay — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:47:52 +0000

I have a confession to make: I love webcomics. I’m quite the comics nerd in general, to be honest. It’s possible that recently completing the first sequential drawing class offered at my university rekindled this fascination, but who’s keeping track? If you’re interested in finding out who’s responsible for teaching me everything I know about the production of comics, visit my professor’s site elephanteater.com. I’ll have a few more samples from my comic posted in the portfolio section here shortly. Now back to webcomics, here are a few of my favoritesâ€¦

xkcd
American Elf
Least I Could Do
Looking For Group
Toothpaste for Dinner
NatalieDee
Questionable Content
AppleGeeks
OGLAF *Not safe for work*

Check if your Mac is 64 bit

James Barclay — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:52:41 +0000

Here’s an easy way to determine whether or not your Mac is 64 bit capable. Open Terminal.app, which is located in /Applications/Utilities and type in

sysctl hw |grep 64bit.

If your machine is 64 bit capable, the result will be

hw.cpu64bit_capable: 1

If your machine is not 64 bit capable, the result will be

hw.cpu64bit_capable: 0

Tip source: OSXDaily.com

Life on Mars?

James Barclay — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:54:46 +0000

So it turns out life on Mars might actually be possible, thanks to an adorable little robot called Le Petit Prince. The robot, (which looks an awful lot like EVE from WALL-E), was designed to care for plants while searching for an environment with ample nutrients. The idea is to eventually produce enough oxygen on Mars to make it suitable for humans, but don’t plan on moving anytime soon, it’s just a concept.

iDeals iPhone app

James Barclay — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:43:21 +0000

So I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman that develops the iDeals iPhone application a few days ago. iDeals was designed to provide an easy to use interface for tracking deals from Amazon, EB Games, Buy.com, Woot!, etc. The iDeals app pulls its information from DODTracker.com servers, but is far more enjoyable than visiting the site itself. Best of all it’s free, go download it.

Snow Stack 3D CSS

James Barclay — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:36:30 +0000

A gentleman by the name of Charles Ying of Satine.org has developed a new 3D CSS visual effects demonstration called Snow Stack, which runs entirely on JavaScript, native WebKit CSS extensions, and XHTML/HTML. If you’re familiar with Cover Flow/Core Animation on the Mac you’ll immediately recognize Snow Stack. In order to run the demo you’ll need either the Snow Leopard Beta + Safari or Leopard + the latest nightly build of WebKit. Either way, it’s quite fascinating to think that this is all being done in the browser.

Cappuccino Web Framework

James Barclay — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:31:43 +0000

So lately I’ve been playing around with the Cappuccino web framework and a nifty little programming language called Objective-J. The Cappuccino framework allows you to create desktop class applications for the browser, and gives you the ability to run these applications on the desktop, (similar to Adobe AIR). One of the many benefits of being able to create applications that run on the desktop is having the ability to run the application while offline.

The interesting thing about Objective-J is that it is based on Objective-C, but any valid JavaScript code is accepted as valid Objective-J code. A fun way to look at it is that Objective-J is to JavaScript as Objective-C is to C.

Cappuccino is frequently compared to another JavaScript framework called SproutCore, which also allows you to build rich Mac-like applications for the browser, (just look at MobileMe). Both Cappuccino and SproutCore utilize the same icon set and window chrome as desktop Mac applications, which can look incredible.

If you’d like to see Cappuccino and Objective-J in action, take a look at 280 Slides, and if you’d like to learn more, read the tutorials on Cappuccino.org and download the sample application.

@end

XHTML is dead, (but don’t worry)

James Barclay — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:06:10 +0000

Today the W3C announced that the XHTML 2 working group will cease development by the end of 2009. Of course all this means is that more time, effort, and man power will be focused on the HTML 5 specification, which is going to drastically change the web, (just take a look at Google Wave). This also means that we won’t have any spec wars to deal with, which are almost as bad as format wars, (HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray anyone?)

From the W3C:

XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5

2009-07-02: Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C’s position regarding the future of HTML. A FAQ answers questions about the future of deliverables of the XHTML 2 Working Group, and the status of various discussions related to HTML. Learn more about the HTML Activity. (Permalink)

FlintCast Episode 2 now on iTunes

James Barclay — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:41:20 +0000

So I’ve managed to get the latest episode of my podcast, FlintCast, on iTunes.

I spent a few hours trying to figure out just why it wasn’t showing up, turns out I was just impatient, (pinging the servers didn’t seem to help, either). Troubleshooting feeds surely can be a headache.

If you’d like to download individual episodes or subscribe you can do so here.