Tiny Mac Tutorials

Now for something completely Different ...

2009-08-31T11:03:00.005+01:00

Snow Leopard has been launched and it makes you want to do
64bit back flips. Almost like the X-Fighters Finals in Battersea Powerstation.
Nate Adams was this years Winner. This footage is from the Daniel Torres run.

Don't try it at home!

FireFox 3.5 Released Today

2009-06-30T21:40:00.004+01:00

The Browser Wars are hotting up! A Developer Chromium Release is now available for Linux and the Mac. Firefox has released version 3.5. and Opera has released version 9.5 unleashing the concept of a Browser as a Webserver. It's all going down ... folks.
Next up is HTML 5 and V8 javascript OpenGL. Surf's up, so keep paddling or you will miss the Wave.

Check out these XCode iphone OpenGL ES Tutorials

2009-06-16T22:32:00.004+01:00

Looking to Learn OpenGL ES for the iPhone. Then you need to visit iPhonedevelopment blog. This will give you a great grounding in iPhone OpenGL ES development, amongst other iphone related know how.

Here are all the tutorial links

Some ported ES NeHe OpenGL tutorials are available here.

Time to get xCoding...

GNU Image Editing Software v2.6.6 Released Today!

2009-06-06T11:03:00.004+01:00

A new version of GNU Image Manipulation Program has been released.

The latest version 2.6.6 is available for download here!

On the Mac you will need to have X11 (Unix X window system) installed; part of the Optional installs package on the OS X Install Disc's.
For designers you may find a few filters (scripted image effects) that don't exist on Photoship.

The Interface gets a bit confusing with application bar and tool palette doubling up but once you get used to it, it's all good!

The Ascii art exports which use aalib library are fully functioning. So you can try this out.

All in all a great free image editing tool and the best thing is ... it is free!

A List of Top iPhone / iPod Touch Game Engines

2009-05-10T19:34:00.006+01:00

With the iPhone/iPod Touch being a great high performance gaming device and Apple's Gaming market growing at a phenomenal speed.
You may want to check out these Game & Physics Engines, to get your iPhone/iPod Touch Gaming App up and running in no time.

1. Torque
2. Unity
3. SIO2 interactive
Checkout the youtube tutorial which includes the 3D App called Blender.
4. oolong engine
5. chipmonk
A Physics engine only.
6. cocos2d
7. irrlicht

Three things look certain you'll need great 3D art, original gaming idea and one of these Engines to cut down your development time.

Plus Lots of perseverance Never ever Give Up ...

High Performance JavaScript Engines

2009-03-07T11:12:00.006Z

Today's top JavaScript Engines are Chrome with it's V8 Engine and Safari 4 Beta with it's Nitro Engine (formally know as squirrel fish extreme).
For more on the performance figures take a look at this article.

If you are looking to exercise your Browser on real world examples you can try these JavaScript games: Mario, Lemmings and minesweeper. You could even try the JavaScript implementation of processing. The Original Java implementation is here.

There is even a free browser clock available here.

md5sum checksum for watch.html is e8b57ea6c59d75cc016ee06804132400

Enjoy.

Safari 4 Beta released today!

2009-02-24T20:30:00.007Z

Safari 4 Beta has been released Today for Mac & PC.

The Nitro javascript engine is Four times faster than the previous version. Lets face it javascript holds the internet together like velcro. So the Faster the Better.

Safari4 has loads of new additions one of which is Top Sites, similar in function to the FireFox FastDial Addon as well as Coverflow Page Browsing. This feature functions like searchme.

The Coverflow Browsing History is accessible via the TopSites search option located on the bottom right of Safari.

There are many many more new additions too many to write about. Why not give it a go and speed up your daily surfin!

Stop Unix Time 1234567890

2009-02-13T21:08:00.005Z

Unix Epoch time stamp flips to 1234567890 on Friday the 13th?
What could possibly go wrong?

Use the Javascript below to see this chronological eclipse

<html>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1">
<body>
<script type='text/javascript'>var d=""+new Date().getTime();document.write("Stop Epoch Time "+d.substring(0,10).fontsize(5).bold());</script>
</body>
</html>

So Stop Watch at the ready!

Top Six Picks for your iPhone & iPod Touch

2008-12-23T10:19:00.012Z

Here are Six great Apps to try out on your shiny new Apple iPod Touch or iPhone. You can down load some of them for free.

6. It's a whole Band and recording studio.
Guitar, Piano,Bass and Drums even an audience.

5. It's a wifi remote for your apple, allowing you to view and change your iTunes song selection using your Ipod Touch/iPhone.
Download this Apple Application for FREE at the Appstore.

4. A virtual pint of beer rendered just like the real thing. You need to slide the pint to virtual buddy before you get to see the pint.
Download this one for FREE at the Appstore.

3. A Nicely polished cars and game play you can drive via the accelerometer, touching the screen or using a touch steering wheel.

2. All the internet radio stations you can think of with the option of saving them in your favourites; making them easy to find next time. All the music you could possibly want to listen to over wifi.

1. Great game! The only tricky part is setting the power and then taking the shot. This requires a back then forwards touch gesture. You can see why this game is top of the games Apps list. The video clips could be a bit better. But the game of 3D pool does not disappoint. Priced perfectly.

There are loads more Apps on the Appstore and SimCity has also just been released.

Enjoy.

Musical interlude

2008-12-14T22:33:00.000Z

Visualisation Toolkit Processing version 1.0 Released!

2008-11-25T22:11:00.006Z

The Java based visualisation tool kit Processing 1.0 has just been released.
Beautiful Visualisations of data, Art installations, Prototypes, Cinema effects, Adverts and Commercial Installations have been built using the power of processing.

The Application ships with working examples. Try it out, no coding required.

Once the sketch or example script is loaded hit play button (>) to execute it.
Hit the stop button ([]) to terminate the sketch/script.
It could not be easier. The author's site can be found on this link.

Enjoy...

Test drive Realtime Augmented 3D Reality!

2008-11-21T20:48:00.008Z

Augmented reality blends real time video footage with the unreal 3D world. A really good example makes it hard to tell the difference between the real and the unreal.

There is a great on-line example available for you to try out on-line. This flash version was created using papervision 3D and an Augmented reality
Flash ARToolkit.
To Get the above example working jump to this address http://interactive.digitalpictures.com.au/
Scroll down past the video seen above and then Ctrl-click or right click on the flash window. Change the browsers flash setting to match your web-cam.

Set the permissions to enable access to your web-cam.

Print out the pdf augmented reality square and place it in-front of your web-cam.

The Question is: How real is virtual?

Free iPhone SDK course anyone?

2008-11-17T20:45:00.004Z

Stanford University has made their iPhone SDK Cocoa Programming course materials available to everyone on-line.

The PDF slides give you a distilled explanation of the fundamental iPhone Programming concepts covering the SDK Frameworks and Objective-C.
This week the course touches on OpenGL ES sweet!

If you are new to XCode, Objective-C and Cocoa there is also an OS X Cocoa Programming course on-line for you to get up to speed. If not become a X-Code Superhero.
So now all you have to do now is find the time ...

Kudos to Stanford University for sharing the knowledge and Apple for relaxing the NDA. Let the games begin!

Mix Music Videos with this Free Video Mixer Application

2008-11-15T12:29:00.023Z

Do you want to add a high tech audio visual atmosphere to your next social gathering.
Why not go large with this free application. It's called CoGe and it's a free video mixing board for your mac.

You can Download CoGe here.

If you don't have any music video's you could try downloading some from youtube. Download the Quicktime plugin Perain. This will enable you to play flash video files (flv). You can also add Quartz Compositions to the mix.
The Mixing board is a bit daunting when you first see it sooo many buttons.

But once you get the hang of it its easy. The larger white squares are selection preview buttons where you drop the image or clip to the mix. You set up the master clip using the masterspoter controls. The master clip for the article image above is the i-tune viral advert. The Filename is ipod.flv. Select "Other" drop Media box and navigate to your nearest clip. Once selected it will appear in Drop Media.

You control the playback speed with the button panel below:

Next up is the master effects panel allows you to add effects and blend the masterspot clip and the sythn A (orange) /B (green) clips.

The effects shipped with CoGe are stored in the installation folder so you will need to
navigate to Applications->CoGe->effects.

Once selected folder fx_q your almost ready to go you just need to add
a clip or image or qtz composistion to the synth A/B clip banks.

Select swap A/B from the master effects (orange) panel and your good to go.

Enjoy.

Learn Objective-C Basic's in minutes

2008-11-08T13:09:00.009Z

To compile Objective-C code on a Mac you need to have XCode tools installed. XCode is supplied free with the OS-X Leopard DVD. It is located under the optional installs folder. Once installed you should be able to compile the Objective-c code below using the command line.
The Unix command line is available via the Terminal application you can navigate to it via Applications->Utilities->Terminal.
The code below will fetch a html file from the web and print it's output. It also has some basic error handling to catch any Errors or Exceptions which may occur and print them. This makes sure any http url's the user may provide as an argument will be handled correctly should an error occur.


//
// Created by devnull[at]london.com on Sept 2008.
// Copyleft (c) 2008. some rights reserved.
// macateeny.blogspot.com
//
// Compile from the command line with command below:
// gcc urlRead.m -Wall -o urlRead -framework Foundation
//

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>


// main entry point of our urlRead foundation tool with
// C style argument counter and vector parameters
int main(int argc,char *argv[])
{

// allocate a memory pool for our NS Objects
NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];

// try catch block to catch exceptions generated by its contents
@try
{
        // declare 2 NSString Obj pointers
        NSString *str, *urlStr ;

        // declare character pointer initialise it with argument vector [1]
        // we are reading 1st argument/parameter provided to the application
        char *urlChr = argv[1];
        if(urlChr==NULL) {

                // no url passed set it to default url string @"string"
                urlStr = @"http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm";
        } else {

                // convert c char string to Objective-c NSString
                urlStr = [NSString stringWithCString:urlChr];
        }

        // init NSURL with url string and store it in an NSData Object
        NSData *dataStr = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlStr]];
        str = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:dataStr encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

        // if the string has data display it
        if( str!=nil ) {

                // prints log timstamp NSLog(@"%@",str);
                printf([[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",str] UTF8String]);
        }
}
@catch(NSException *error) {

        // An Exception occured print the value in the NSException error Object
        NSLog( @"Error Exception:%@ cause:%@",[error name],[error reason]);
}
@finally {

        // unleash the allocated pool
        [pool release];
}

// The app is terminated
return 0;
}

Save the content above to a urlRead.m file or download it here.
Then compile it from the command line using:

gcc urlRead.m -Wall -o urlRead -framework Foundation

Now once compiled it will create a urlRead binary which you can execute.
To run it type ./urlRead from the command line.
Finally for an additional bit of fun you can send the html text to the OS X text-to-speech engine and yes your mac will read you an inspiring poem. This script may even change your life so try it out.

./urlRead | textutil -format html -convert txt -stdin -stdout | say

Enjoy...

Get your Free OS X Cross Over Application ... times running out

2008-10-28T21:03:00.003Z

The Codeweavers "Lame Duck Challenge" has been met so it's a free OS X or Linux Cross Over Games application for you and me. It allows you to run windows games on OS X or Linux.

Download it here. http://down.codeweavers.com/

Only a few hours left to download it for free.

Android source code unleashed Today!

2008-10-21T21:22:00.008+01:00

What is Android? A device, a product? No its a mobile phone platform not tied to any mobile manufacturer or mobile Telecom operator. The platform has been released as open source today. Preview the introduction video below for more information on the software technology involved.

For the Source code check out http://source.android.com/download.

The NDA has been lifted on the iPhone SDK and the Appstore is the iron bridge of mobile application distribution. All that is needed is an open source iPhone SDK.
One just needs to look at the success of the Apache and Linux open source development juggernauts.

So Symbian, Windows mobile, Blackberry RIM and the iPhone now have a new contender.
Opportunities will abound. Make no mistake the people at Apple will have done their homework.

What you need is Map of the Problematique

2008-10-08T22:57:00.000+01:00

Three Free Picture enhancing effects

2008-09-26T23:13:00.013+01:00

Here are three ImageMagick picture effects in one shell script! Free for you to try out. It may just save you a few hours of image editing....

The Blue print effect ./blueprint.sh + filename

Polaroid Stack ./polaroidStack.sh + filename

This is third effect polaroid boarder effect ./polaroid.sh + filename

All three available here as a Free download

By downloading it you agree to use it at your own risk, all efforts have been taken to test it as best as possible in the few hours it took to write. The shell script source code is free for you to modify.

For installation make sure imageMagick is installed.
Then unzip the polaroid.sh.zip shell script on your desktop.

Then open up Terminal issue commands below:

cd ~/Desktop
chmod 755 polaroid.sh

ln -s polaroid.sh blueprint.sh

ln -s polaroid.sh polaroidStack.sh

Then put and image you want to convert on the desktop and type in the Terminal command
./polaroid.sh filename

It will then open up the image in Preview once complete.

Have fun...

Create a Blue Print effect in minutes

2008-09-24T21:44:00.011+01:00

Create a Blue Print effect from existing images in minutes. All you need is ImageMagick and the Gnu Image Manipulation Program for minor touch up's. To achieve a photo realistic look you'll need to spend more time with Photoshop and a psdtuts tutorial. A Prime candidate for the Blue Print effect is an image with a uniform black or while background.

The first step is to create the paper background.
The commands below are part of a shell script and the $1 bash variable denotes a file name argument passed to the script.
To create the background board.jpg on the fly we need to know the original size of the image being converted. The size is determined using the command below.

rsize="$( convert ${1} -identify resolution | awk '{print $3}')"

Next we create a paper background using random noise and plasma, you see it really is magick!

convert -size ${rsize} xc: +noise Random board-noise.jpg
convert board-noise.jpg -size ${resize} -negate plasma:grey50-grey50 -shade 120x45 -blur 0x2 -colorspace Gray board.jpg

The background is now complete.
The next step is to convert the image to something more mono chromatic using this next magick command.

convert $1 -edge 1.4 -negate +dither -colors 2 -normalize -colorspace Gray -blur 0x.4 -contrast-stretch 0x45% ${1%*.*}_redux.png

The file name of the image will be converted to one with the suffix "_redux.png". The -edge detects the image edges using a radius of 1.4. This can be increased or decreased depending on how thick you want the edge to be.

The next step is to invert the colours and paint or -fill it blue '#0054a5'.

convert ${1%*.*}_redux.png -normalize -negate -fill '#0054a5' -opaque black ${1%*.*}_line.png

The Final stage is to merge the line image with a paper background using the composite image merging command.

composite -compose linear-light -watermark 60 -gravity Center board.jpg ${1%*.*}_line.png ${1%*.*}_bluelpt.png

Here we merge the background "board.jpg" image with the line art to produce the final blue print image. In the Next post I will package it into a shell script with a few extras thrown in.

So there! You have now used all of your cognative surplus for this week enjoy...

A Brief Interlude

2008-09-18T22:07:00.001+01:00

Write to files with this Objective-C example

2008-09-15T22:06:00.006+01:00

Here is a quick example to get you started on Objective-C. You can compile it within Terminal using the command line. Source code zip file here.
The gcc compiler command is as follows:
gcc filetest.m -Wall -o filetest -framework Foundation

Once compiled execute it as follows ./filetest
This will then create a text file called filetest.txt which contains a text string.
No magic required.

Note the writeToFile method has change for OS X 10.5 it now includes data encoding and NSError.
Once you have this working you can experiment with writeToURL...enjoy


// filetest.m
// Created by macateeny.blogspot.com Sept 2008.
// Copyleft (c) 2008. some rights reserved.
// 
// Compile from the command line with:
// gcc filetest.m -Wall -o filetest -framework Foundation
//

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

// main entry point of our file test tool with the argument counter and vector
int main(int argc,char *argv[])
{
        // allocate a memory pool for our NSString Objects
        NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];

        // declare NSString Obj pointer and initialise it
        NSString *str = @"Cooking with Objective-C\r\n";

        // declare NSString filename and alloc string value
        NSString *filenameStr = @"./filetest.txt";

        // NSObject which contains all the error information
        NSError *error;

        // write contents and check went ok
        if(![str writeToFile: filenameStr atomically: YES encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&error]) {
                NSLog(@"We have a problem %@\r\n",[error localizedFailureReason]);
        }

        // unleash the allocated pool smithers
        [pool release];

        // The app is terminated
        return 0;
}



md5sum: 9463cf40d33f02093e72d80320ba92e4  filetest.zip

Cappuccino built with Objective-J is finally released!

2008-09-04T22:15:00.007+01:00

Cappuccino the Web application Framework built with Objective-J has arrived. As the name suggests it's JavaScript with extended Objective-C [style] syntax. It is open source and ready for download.

For a Demo of a finished web application in action take a look at 280 Slides. 280 Slides is an on-line app similar to KeyNote. It also saves Presentations as Power Point. Killing two projectors with one stone so to speak.

The benefit of using Cappuccino over the SproutCore framework, is it removes the need for HTML,CSS and JS to create an Application. It's the one framework to rule them all and in the darkness free them. The recommended dev platform is firefox with the firebug plug-in. There are Editor add-on's for TextMate and SubEtha. Check here for more on the subject.

So the dudes at 280 North are onto something big ...

Are you cool?

Bookmark these iPhone Development resources now!

2008-08-31T21:59:00.005+01:00

Here are the iPhone SDK Development resources to get you started:

More Code snippets and source code:

iPhone Accelerometer snippets
Get a Physics engine running on the iPhone.

You may want to cache the info located on these sites as restrictions apply.

Enjoy...

Make Using the Web easier with this Mozilla Plugin

2008-08-27T21:03:00.007+01:00

This is the latest offering from Mozilla labs, a Plugin that looks very promising based on the presentation below. A world of microformats and Web API's is about to collide.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

The mozilla plugin is here

Yet another reason to give Firefox and Thunderbird a try.
If your not using thunderbird on OS X make it appear so with this great theme and icalender plugin.

Enjoy...