Better read-only view for google spreadsheets

If you need read only access to a google docs spreadsheet it’s much faster and easier to use an exported version. Just go to File > Download As > Web Page and it’ll open a new window with the fully loaded spreadsheet. Here’s a public spreadsheet if you want to try it out.

October 28, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Status for Facebook

I recently built a 3rd party Facebook app for iOS that makes your Facebook feed look like your twitter feed Check it our for free in the app store.

October 26, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Problems authenticating on public wifi

At Starbucks or McDonalds, on airplanes, at libraries or anywhere else they have free wifi you get popups asking you to accept terms and conditions and click a [Connect Now] button. If you ever have problems getting these screens to display it’s almost certainly because you’re using non-default DNS servers. The solution for me was to go to System Preferences > Network and create a new Location called “Default DNS”. ...

October 25, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Debugging bottlenecks in Javascript

For most bottleneck debugging Chrome Inspector’s profiles view in invaluable until a bottleneck is identified and then it becomes a bit cumbersome. I like to have a quicker overview of the piece i’m working on optimizing. I use this small and easy timer snippet. var timer = { start: function() { timer.t = new Date().getTime(); }, log: function(str) { str = str ? str : 'Execution time: '; console.log(str + ((new Date().getTime()) - timer.t)); } }; //Example (function() { //... timer.start(); //... timer.log('first landmark passed: '); //... timer.log('second landmark passed: '); //... })();

October 14, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Spider Match! is featured in iTunes!

I’m not sure what this will mean for sales but really cool either way. Check it out in the app store

October 3, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Logging into postgres on Bitnami's Ruby Stack VM

The VM for the Bitnami Ruby Stack doesn’t have the correct credentials for postgres anywhere that I could find. Incorrect credentials that I saw on the Bitnami site, in the docs hosted on the VM, or on the internet while searching for a solution: user: root pass: user: root pass: root user: administrator pass: bitnami user: bitnami pass: bitnami user: postgres pass: user: postgres pass: bitnami user: postgres pass: postgres I never found the correct combination but instead simply installed postgres via apt-get and moved the bitnami postgres installation outside of $PATH in case I need it in the future. ...

October 3, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Custom cursors, relative paths, and internet explorer

Custom cursors in an external CSS file will 404 in Internet Explorer unless your using fully qualified urls. This effects IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9 and IE10. What is happening Internet Explorer for some ungodly reason treats relative font paths as relative to the page, not relative to the CSS File. My Fix You can fully qualify the URL for all clients but I work offline often so I’d rather have Chrome referencing my dev server rather than the production CDN. Normally I’d turn to CSS hacks here but there’s nothing easy to include inline for IE10. I ended up using the ie class which is added via javascript onReady because IE10 doesn’t support conditional comments. ...

October 2, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Aggressively removing DS_Store files in git repos

DS_Store files in git repositories is a minor problem for a lot of people. Global .gitignore files are a great solution to not commiting DS_Store files but it won’t actively remove them from your project directories. This is my shortcut for git status: function s() { find . -name '*.DS_Store' -type f -delete #find and delete DS_Store files git status -s -b #s - simple output, b - include branch name }

September 18, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Animal Match Games for iOS

I built a simple iOS match game for my kids that addresses a few common shortcomings of existing kids apps and then themed it when they wanted more animals. Differences that I felt were important: There’s nothing to distract from the gameplay. I don’t do promotions, ads, in app purchases or even more inocuous things like a start button or settings page. If the app is open, it’s ready to play. No sounds. My kids love to play with the vibration toggle on my phone and being able to give them something to play with that definitely won’t make noise has been very helpful at times. All 3 are universal apps so it’s not necessary to buy it again on the iPad. The Apps Animal Match View in App Store ...

September 9, 2013 · 1 min · Paul

Disabling the save shortcut for browsers

The save hotkey in Chrome needs to be changed for all the same reasons I disabled the Print hotkey. I hit it by accident a few times a week thinking some other application is active and then I have to wait for it to load to get out of it. It’s only a few seconds but it’s an easily fixed annoyance. The Fix Changing the Save hotkey for Chrome is pretty simple and it’ll work similarly for other browsers. Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts. Add custom shortcuts for: ...

August 26, 2013 · 1 min · Paul