alex brie . net » Programming

7 essential iPhone love tips

Alex — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:04:58 +0000

I used to be a pathetic iPhone user with only a few tricks down my sleeve. Really now, I even hated listening to music on it, since I had to get it out of the pocket and unlock the screen every goddamn time I wanted to go to the next song.

However, all of these changed in the last couple of days when I learned a lot more about this toy. Enough to turn me into a peaceful and happy user.

If you don’t know them already, here’s a nice list(I knew some of it already):

Foreplay:
Did you know that..

1. You can take screenshots from the iPhone, natively. All you have to do is keep the Home button(the round one) pressed, while briefly pressing the Lock(top) button.
2. You can save any image from within Safari - just touch and hold the finger on the image, until a context menu pops up.
3. You can zoom in on any div within iPhone Safari, just double-tap on it.
4. You can jump back to the top of the page on Safari, just click on the title bar

Intercourse

5. You might have never tried it(I didn’t for a loong time), but there’s a button on the mike of your headphones. Tap on it once for play/pause answer call/hang up, keep it pressed for 2 seconds and release to ignore call, press it twice to send call to voicemail, or(while listening to music) to skip to the next song. Press it tree times to go back to the previous song (firmware 2.1 only).

6. If you want to navigate the springboard screens but don’t like to swipe, just tap the bottom corners(right above the dock).

Heavy artillery
When writing stuff
7. If you frequently find yourself switching from letters to punctuation only to grab a comma or period, here’s two tricks:
a. double tap the space key to insert the period(you have to enable this in the settings)
b. on the keyboard tap the punctuation icon without releasing, slide to the sign you want. When you release, it’ll be added and you’re back on the letters keyboard. You have to try it to understand it better, but’s it’s a neat power user trick that saves a couple of taps.

8. If you hate the auto-correction (if you have an unsupported language), here’s two pointers:
a. add your keyboard language from the settings. Switching to it will disable most auto-corrects - Hurray (thanks to Kit for this great tip)

image hotlinked from Kit
b. if you find that the phone usually suggests you the wrong word instead of the right one, hit on the x on the suggested word THREE times - sometimes it won’t work, but in most cases it will stop suggesting it (still firmware 2.1 ?)

There are many more tiny tricks you probably already discovered (how to make a soft reset(hold Home+Lock for a tiny while), how to shut down(keep them pressed until prompted to shut down), double tapping the home button brings up a mini iPod-player shortcut), and obviously many more. I won’t bother you with them, they are pretty trivial.

Me, I’m just excited I learned about the headphone button trick and how to disable the iPhone auto-correction. Call me lame but now I love my iPhone again

Always index your tables. Always

Alex — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:47:47 +0000

This is going to be brief one: iRead.ro, one of the projects I’m working on during my spare time, was giving me major headaches lately - 2 weeks ago, it took like 15 seconds to render a page. In the last couple of days, it was taking somewhere around 100 seconds to render it; obviously too much for the nginx server that was running my two mongrels.

I *had* indexed my tables, by id, url and several other fields. Turns out, they weren’t indexed with the right columns.

I went into the console and tried running the simple query used by the controller, in order to retrieve the FeedItems (where FeedItem < Item) between two boundary dates. Yep, the +100 seconds were there. Although the over 32000 items in the table were obviously not a *huge* number, perhaps their size(and the limits of my slicehost RAM) was the problem.

Quick fix:


./script/generate migration AddExtraIndex
class AddExtraIndex < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_index :items, :type
    add_index :items, :date
  end

  def self.down
    #...
  end
end

Ran the migration and… here you go. iRead now renders the pages in around 3 seconds (without any caching whatsoever). Enjoy!

Caut tema de Wordpress

Alex — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:55:51 +0000

[excitement by cloud_nine]
Spuneam ca am capatat inspiratie si entuziasm nou? Una din chestiile pe care vreau sa le reinventez o reprezinta si blogul.

Mai clar, vreau sa il reorganizez la nivelul:

categorii - in principiu o sa contina 4-5 mari categorii: casual blogging, tehnologie, scrieri/eseuri, divertisment, tutoriale si cateva subcategorii. Va fi, evident, ingrozitor de greu sa migrez cele peste 2000 de articole existente in aceste noi categorii, poate stiti voi vreun plugin de wordpress care sa permita editari batch rapide, al tuturor articolelor dintr-o categorie, intr-una noua? Daca nu, asta e, va trebui sa imi bag iarasi coada direct in Mysql.
tema de Wordpress - cea mai longeviva tema a blogului meu a fost cea originala de Textpattern, care mi se pare in continuare una din cele mai misto teme de blog ever. Caut asadar o tema de Wordpress care sa aibe: un aspect lejer si “easy on the eye” in aceeasi idee de la Textpattern, sau gen Seth Godin, dar totodata sa fie “magazine oriented” adica sa arate, undeva prin partea de varf sau sidebar din pagina principala, automat, gen coloane separate, ultimele intrari din cele 4-5 categorii importante(la nivel de linkuri, macar). Si sa fie si eleganta ca a lui Tim Ferris, pe cat posibil. Eventual bazata pe Sandbox. Si nu, Mimbo nu prea merge, pentru ca nu prea pun poze pe blog.
Nu gasesc acum vreun exemplu pentru ce vreau, dar daca as gasi bine ar fi, ca as trece si eu la treaba mai cu spor.

Asadar, daca stiti:
1. vreun plugin misto de editare batch a muultor articole(pe baza de categorii)
sau
2. ceva tema wordpress care sa aduca macar tangential cu cele descrise mai sus, dati-mi un comentariu.

Nu in ultimul rand, daca esti webdesigner entuziast ce doreste sa-si demonstreze talentul aducand la realitate visul meu de tema wordpress ideala, te voi rasplati prin promovare, faima, link PR 5 si 10 litri de Skol la PET de 2 Litri :D. Dar numai daca iese asa cum tot caut eu, de 5 ani incoace.

AlexCrunchLite - my first Wordpress Theme

Alex — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:43:35 +0000

Note: although highly similar, this is not entirely the theme I currently have on my blog, but a simplified (ligher) version of it.

I’ve been using a self-made wordpress theme for the last half year and eventually decided to share it with the world.

AlexCrunchLite wordpress theme

It was tough finding the time to clean it up enough that it can be used by others as well. On the occasion I also found and fixed several bugs that made Internet Explorer 6.0 render it … well… badly.

The theme is exactly what I look for in a Wordpress theme: it’s pretty clean, white, and extremely SEO friendly. It is based on a CSS originally found in CrunchNotes.com, based on Webreakstuff by Frederico Oliveira, 2005 and released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. I added my time to make it work nicely with Wordpress’s default theme (Kubrik), I added my favorite settings to make it suit my taste.

I’m also submitting it to Wordpress.org themes directory, but it seems like I need to add a theme URL to it so.. this is why this post is for.

The download link for the theme is HERE

PS. I’m not a professional webdesigner, not even the classic webdeveloper. So if you see any bugs I won’t be fixing them, although you should feel free to submit your fixes in the comments so I can patch them into the theme.

Cum mi-am upgradat si jailbreak-uit iPhone-ul 2G la firmware 2.0

Alex — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:25:01 +0000

Am promis sa povestesc cum mi-am upgradat iPhone-ul de prima generatie, de la firmware 1.1.4 la 2.0 si cum l-am “jailbreak” ca sa-l pot folosi

Nu a fost deloc complicat, odata ce am trecut de temerile initiale.

1. m-am dus pe http://blog.iphone-dev.org/ si de aici am descarcat versiunea 2.0.1 a jucariei Pwnage Tool. Atentie, este vorba despre versiunea pentru Mac. Habar n-am cum se vor descurca posesorii de Windows, desi banuiesc ca procesul nu este foarte diferit.

2. am descarcat firmware 2.0 cu ajutorul iTunes. Adica am conectat iPhone-ul, apoi am dat click pe Upgrade si, in timp ce iTunes descarca firmware-ul 2.0, am deconectat iPhone-ul. Nu de alta, dar nu eram inca gata.

3. am descarcat si dezarhivat fisierele bootloaders disponibile aici: http://www.enkrypted.com/bootloaders.rar

4. am urmat pasii pentru Simple Mode descrisi in tutorialul de pe macrumors, adica:

4.1. am pornit Pwnage Tool, am ales Simple Mode, apoi versiunea iPhone clasic (nu cea 3G). Am dat next, iar Pwnage a inceput sa caute firmware-ul 2.0 pentru iPhone-ul 2G, anume iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347 (atentie, cel al iPhone-urilor 3G se numeste iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347). L-a gasit (in directorul lui iTunes), asa ca mai departe a inceput sa caute bootloaderele descarcate anterior. Le-a gasit si pe ele(probil va trebui sa ii indicati unde anume le-ati salvat), asa ca s-a apucat sa creeze firmware-ul “cracuit” amestecand reteta sa proprie si fisierele descrise anterior. Pentru asta m-a intrebat daca sunt utilizator “legit” de iPhone. Atentie, daca spuneti DA atunci nu vi-l si decodeaza, ca presupune ca sunteti americani si sunteti abonati la AT&T. Asa ca am raspuns “NO” ca sa imi si decodeze/deblocheze (ma rog, sa pot da telefoane de pe SIM de Vodafone)

4.2 dupa indelunga asteptare, o sa vrea sa conectati iPhone-ul la calculator si sa-l bagati in mod DFU. Iconitele sunt destul de explicite - trebuie sa-l inchideti, apoi apasati Home si Power pentru vreo 10 secunde, apoi ridicati de pe Power si continuati sa apasati pe Home vreo 5 secunde. Nu mai stiu exact ce si cum, dar o sa va prindeti din desene. Puteti exersa inainte pe filmuletul despre iPhone DFU de aici.

5. Odata iPhone-ul in DFU mode, puteti comuta pe iTunes. Acceptati sa dati “Restore” dar apasati Alt simultan cu clickul. Asta va deschide un dialog ce va pune sa alegeti imaginea de firmware; o veti alege pe cea salvata de Pwnage Tool, pe Desktop.

6. ASTEPTATI. Multicel. Se pare ca singurul risc de a va distruge iPhone-ul este aici - si anume daca in vreun fel sau altul intrerupeti procesul de scriere al bootloaderului sau ce se mai intampla pe iPhone. Asa ca aruncati pisica din casa si faceti o baricada umana in jurul iPhone-ului si laptopului, ca nu cumva ceva rau sa se intample.

7. Cand totul s-a terminat si am vazut iconitele alea dragute pe ecran, am dat mai departe Restore in iTunes. Cred ca am facut bine, ca mi-a bagat pozele, SMS-urile si contactele de pe calculator.

8. am upgradat ce era de upgradat in ~~Claria~~Cydia (un fel de Installer.app dar mai naspa) si am inceput sa ma joc cu AppStore si aplicatiile legale si gratuite.

Cam atat, va urez mult succes. Va sfatuiesc sa cititi tutorialele de pe macforums sau iClarified cu atentie, sper ca nu am uitat vreo etapa esentiala.

Wordpress for iPhone.. now on AppStore

Alex — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:19:44 +0000

Wordpress iPhone

Is there anything to be added? It’s Wordpress blogging client native iPhone app, it’s free it’s on AppStore, it’s really cool looking, has tags, categories, can be used with several blogs at a time, lets you take pictures, upload and post them to your blog in a couple of seconds.

[iTunes AppStore link for iPhone Wordpress app]

It’s a must-have, the one and only iPhone killer app for the addicted blogger.

Really, I’m getting AppStore envy. How long will it take till my jailbroken iPhone first-get firmware 1.1.4 will be upgradeable to 2.0 ? I’m a bit frightened to use the PwnageTool method, but it seems like there’s no alternative for now. So I guess I’ll just have to try it.

Wordpress 2.6

Alex — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:00:30 +0000

Only a couple of months after Wordpress 2.5, Wordpress 2.6 was released 5 days ago. The blogpost on Wordpress.org tells us that Wordpress 2.5 branch is now discontinued.
Wordpress 2.6, while remaining plugin/theme compatible with the previous version adds the following:

over 194 bugs fixed
improved performance when dealing with thousands of pages and/or categories
full ssl support, proactive security enhancements, default disabling ox XML-RPC
word count, plugin updates notification bubbles, better controlls, TinyMce
uses Google Gears when activating the Turbo mode for local caching of most used javascript and css files
bookmarklet for quick posting from anywhere on the web; it’s also context sensitive, in that posting a Youtube video or Flickr image will automatically know the type of content
post revisions - drafts can now be edited like wikis, seeing the previous versions of your writing. together with the word count, this is pretty great

10 Ruby programming tips you should already know

Alex — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:37:50 +0000

Other blogs about Ruby or Rails have already touched some of the tips I’m going to show, but it never hurts to remind you these small recipes aimed at Ruby novices:

1. Default method parameters as a hash:
I tend to use this when the argument list tends to vary, and I want to have a couple of nice defaults for the method attributes. This is actually what Rails uses intensively.


  def my_method(my_default_attributes={})
    default_values = {:name=>"Anonymous", :race=>"elf", :age=>13}.merge! my_default_attributes
    ...
  end

2. Store results in instance variables:
Let’s say I’ll invoke many times a method that returns the sum of elements in a list that’s an instance variable. I wouldn’t want the calculus to happen every single time I call it, but will store the result in an instance variable, like this:


  def my_compute_stuff
    unless @my_compute_stuff_local_var
      @my_compute_stuff_local_var = 0
      ... # extra computation that stores the result into @my_compute_stuff_local_var
    end
    return @my_compute_stuff_local_var
  end

Even better, when the computation in question is a one-liner, we can condense this to:


  def my_compute_stuff
    @my_compute_stuff_local_var||=... # the extra computation that stores the result into @my_compute_stuff_local_var
  end

What if we want to force the recompute?
I’d use:


  def my_compute_stuff(force=false)
    if !@my_compute_stuff_local_var or force
      @my_compute_stuff_local_var = 0
      ...
    end
    return @my_compute_stuff_local_var
  end

3. Comment out several lines at a time
When I want to comment a block of several lines, I use one of two tricks:
a. I use Textmate (on Mac) with the multi-line insertion; that is, I go to the start of the first line I want to comment, click, press Alt(Option) so that the cursor turns into a cross, click at the start of the last line and press #; all the lines from the first to the last get commented out simultaneously
b. Ruby’s less known block comment syntax (see also here):


        =begin

        We're in a comment here.  Both the =begin and the =end must be the
        first elements on a line for this to work.

        =end

4. Multi assignment
Like other dynamic languages, Ruby also allows assigning several variables at a time, like in this example. The secret behind the magic trick is that Ruby will consider both the left and the right side as arrays. Which also leads to tip number 5.

      
        b, c = 5, 6
        a, b = b, c

5. Multiple return values
Your method wants to return several things at the same time, this is magically taken care of by the multi assignment:

    
      def sum_dif(a, b)
        return a+b, a-b
      end

      a, b = sum_dif(4, 5)

6. Playing with dates
Whenever I need to create a date, I usually create it using Date.civil(year, month, day). What if I want to find the date of the last day of the month?
Date.civil(year, month, -1) is the answer.

For instance,

    
      a = Date.civil(2008, 06, -1)
      a.day # == 30
      b = Date.civil(2008, 02, -1)
      b.day # == 29

7. Still about dates: nicely printing out a date is as simple as nicely reading it from a string:
For instance,


  b = Date.strptime("07/02/2008","%m/%d/%Y") # b becomes the date of 2nd July 2008
  b.strftime("%d - %m - %Y") # will print "02 - 07 - 2008"

8. You surely already know this, but I love it anyways: a very nice well-known construct is to move, when possible the if condition at the end, turning a 3-liner into a one-liner:

    
      if my_condition
        one_line_operation
      end

      # into 

      one_line_operation if my_condition

9. Pretty print strings decimals. The format descriptors are pretty much similar to those used in C’s printf so I won’t go into details.

    
      my_string = "%01d %06d %02d" % [type, code, age]

10. Enumerable’s Inject method. This nice functional programming trick will shave quite a few lines of your code. For instance, the sum of the ages of your users (in the @users array) is computed as simply as doing:

    
      ages_sum = @users.inject(0) {|sum, user| sum + user.age }

Dreamhost and mod_rails for your tiny Rails application

Alex — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:48:21 +0000

To my shame as a rubyist, it was only a couple of hours ago that I found out, while reading Ruby Inside about mod_rails and the wonders it does for the Rails community.

Mod_Rails(aka Passenger) is an Apache module developed by Phusion, a small Dutch IT consultancy, that makes it easy to deploy Rails applications on Apache-based stacks.

Several performance tests show it to be pretty fast, and it uses shared memory in a better way than mongrel, making it the best choice for shared server Rails hosting. For dedicated or VPS, mongrel is still the right choice being slightly faster and using less RAM (see this for reference).
What’s the best part about mod_rails ? Dreamhost included it on their standard setup, which means all of us can finally use Dreamhost for our casual Ruby on Rails apps. The nightmare is over for Rails developers on a budget.

How do you set up a Rails app on Dreamhost? Pretty darn easy.

1. copy using FTP your rails app folder somewhere in your user folder; so you’d have something like ~/my_user/my_rails_app
2. set up a new domain/subdomain from your Dreamhost control panel (see the Manage Domains button). Make sure to use the same FTP user, and under “Specify your web directory:” fill in my_rails_app/public (where my_rails_app was the folder with your Rails application)
3. check the Ruby on Rails Passenger (mod_rails)? checkbox
4. you are done (off course, provided you have configured your rails app’s config/environment.rb and database.yml with the required specifics - your Dreamhost database name, user name and password; also, Dreamhost supports for now two Rails versions: 1.2.6 and 2.0.2, so make sure you’re using that specific one)

When you edit your Rails code and would like your app to take the changes into account, Passenger(mod_rails) must be notified for restarting/reloading. You’ll do this by changing(updating) a file called restart.txt under my_rails_app/tmp/ folder. The simplest command for this is touch tmp/restart.txt from the ssh console(i’m assuming you’re located within my_rails_app)

I’m ending this small tutorial by reminding you that, if you are not a Dreamhost user yet and would like to, you can use the promo code discount BRIEPROMOCODE to shave 70$ off your bill. Trust me, it’s the best you can get for the money.

How to import Ultimate Warrior Tags into Wordpress 2.3+ and how to easily backup your Wordpress database

Alex — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:48:50 +0000

If, like me, you had been using Ultimate Warrior Tags (UTW) to assign Technorati-compatible tags to your article, then you must have been as annoyed as I was when upgrading to Wordpress 2.3.2 or Wordpress 2.3.3. All of the sudden, Wordpress acquired tagging capabilities but disabled UTW along the way.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that Wordpress now knows tags natively, but I was pretty annoyed to discover that my previous ones had disappeared.
They didn’t, actually. As it turns out, importing the old UTW tags into the new Wordpress is an extremely simple built-in mechanism. All you have to do is open your Wordpress blog backend, log in as admin, go to the “Manage” menu, the “Import” page. There’s an “Import Ultimate Tag Warrior tags into the new native tagging structure” link in the bottom, that will start the 4-step no user action required process that worked perfectly for me.

Beware, though! The Wordpress builders give you the ferm warning: Don’t be stupid - backup your database before proceeding!.

In order to backup your Wordpress blog database, the simplest, easiest way, and the one I recommend, is to use WP’s built-in mechanism: just go to Manage->Export and click on “Download Export File“. This will save a pretty large xml file(1.3MB for a small blog, 6.8MB for a big blog) with data from WP’s tables - including custom fields set by plugins, but not the custom tables that some plugins create. Still, it’s the easiest, hassle-free backup procedure for your blog, so it would be a good idea to do it every once in a while, just in case.