Much as I love San Francisco & dislike Florida, I’m going to miss my good friends here. My condo is a very close-knit community and we’re like family here. We all look out for each other. I doubt if it’ll be like that where I’m moving, especially since it’s a rental community. On the other hand, I really look forward to being part of San Francisco’s exciting tech startup community, which doesn’t exist in Florida.

In other news, I’m getting ready to release a new application for Notion called Detective, which shows your new Twitter followers and unfollows in the menu bar. We’re still waiting for the final artwork, so I might not be able to submit it before I move.

One common task that’s complicated by the sandbox is adding a login item. A good tutorial on creating login items is available at delite studio, although some changes to the code are needed. That code follows Apple’s earlier guideline of using LSRegisterURL to register your helper app. However, I found that it always fails with error -10819. According to an Apple engineer in Apple’s developer forum, you should not call LSRegisterURL in a sandboxed app.

Note that your application can’t add itself as a login item. You need to write a simple helper app that launches your main app and it must be included in the main application bundle in the relative path /Contents/Library/LoginItems/.

The method for adding & removing a login item turned out to be very simple:

- (void)addLoginItem {
    NSString *ref = @"com.madebynotion.myLoginHelper";
	if (!SMLoginItemSetEnabled((CFStringRef)ref, true)) {
		NSLog(@"SMLoginItemSetEnabled failed.");
	}
}

- (void)removeLoginItem {
    NSString *ref = @"com.madebynotion.myLoginHelper";
	if (!SMLoginItemSetEnabled((CFStringRef)ref, false)) {
		NSLog(@"SMLoginItemSetEnabled failed.");
	}
}

If you need to find out whether your login item is enabled, here’s a way to do it:

-(BOOL)appIsPresentInLoginItems
{
    NSString *bundleID = @"com.madebynotion.myLoginHelper";
    NSArray * jobDicts = nil;
    jobDicts = (NSArray *)SMCopyAllJobDictionaries( kSMDomainUserLaunchd );
    // Note: Sandbox issue when using SMJobCopyDictionary()

    if ( (jobDicts != nil) && [jobDicts count] > 0 ) {

        BOOL bOnDemand = NO;

        for ( NSDictionary * job in jobDicts ) {

            if ( [bundleID isEqualToString:[job objectForKey:@"Label"]] ) {
                bOnDemand = [[job objectForKey:@"OnDemand"] boolValue];
                break;
            }
        }

        CFRelease((CFDictionaryRef)jobDicts); jobDicts = nil;
        return bOnDemand;

    }
    return NO;
}

Although this method works and seems to be the preferred way to do it in the sandbox, it’s less optimal than the old non-sandbox method, since your login item won’t appear in the users & groups preference panel’s login items list and can only be turned on & off from your own application.

Santorum surges from behind in Iowa.
Rick Santorum Paints Iowa Brown
Romney pulls out win in Iowa, but Santorum stains his victory
Santorum Almost Comes From Behind, But Romney Pulls Out A Win With 8 Vote Lead

Remember, Google is your friend: Santorum

In case you’re wondering, Mitt Romney’s real name is Willard.

More at MetaFilter.

1. Wilco – The Whole Love
   This is their best album since “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”.

2. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
   Much more sophisticated than their first album, yet it still keeps their wonderful folk rock sound and beautiful vocal harmonies.

3. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
   Just plain beautiful.

4. The Decemberists – The King is Dead
5. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
6. Adele – 21
7. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
8. Foster the People – Torches
   Some of the catchiest songs of the year.

9. Blitzen Trapper – American Goldwing
10. Tinariwen – Tassili
    I’m addicted to their music, which has an almost hypnotic trance-inducing effect. Their latest album enhances their Desert Blues sounds with some English lyrics and guest artists like Nels Cline, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and members of TV On The Radio.

Here’s a Spotify playlist with some of my favorite songs.

• InstaCSS | Instant CSS Documentation Search
• UI Polish In An Instant
• Bezier curves – a primer
• Accessing Image Properties Without Loading the Image into Memory – Ole Begemann
• Why and How I use Git – Part Two [Alexandru Brie] Using git on Dreamhost

Posted by Postilicious

It’s noticeably a lot faster than an iPhone 4, especially when scrolling through a list of photos in apps like Instagram. The screen is brighter than the iPhone 4 and has a yellowish tint (although it isn’t too noticeable in this photo). After using it a few days, the yellow tint seems to be less visible.

The screen is easy to read outdoors. I was able to read a book on the screen in moderate sunlight without any difficulty.

The camera is a huge improvement. Note the much sharper details in the iPhone 4S photo below. The iPhone 4S won’t replace my D90, but I probably won’t carry a point & shoot camera any more.

iPhone 4

iPhone 4S

Before I bought the 4S, I wasn’t really too interested in Siri, but after using it, I’m very impressed and found it to be fairly accurate at recognizing my commands. In all, the iPhone 4S is an impressive & worthwhile upgrade.

I submitted Sugar Rush version 1.2.1 today, which lets you earn real world bonuses with Kiip.