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Simpler Résumé Updates

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 13:12:37 -0400

I decided to update my résumé this week. No, I haven't lost my job, and I'm not actively looking for a new one, but a little while ago I asked people on Mastodon how to acquire practical experience with "cloud stuff" if your job doesn't provide it, and someone suggested …

54

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 17:38:33 -0500

Well, 2020 was quite a year. The COVID-19 pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests, the Presidential election, the subsequent unfounded accusations of widespread election fraud, and incitement of an attack on the Capitol. Talking about how the year went for me seems incredibly self-centered, but this …

53

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 19:34:12 -0400

Another belated birthday post, and another reminder to myself that I really want to get into the habit of blogging often.

We moved into a house last year, after several years of renting. We like it. It is a little farther away from our jobs than we would like, but …

Menubar Countdown 2.1

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 09:14:53 -0500

Way back in 2009, I released Menubar Countdown 1.0. It's a simple app that displays a countdown timer in the Mac menu bar. I created it because I was experimenting with the Pomodoro Technique and I didn't like any of the other timer apps I tried.

I made a …

LUNAR for C and Rust

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 21 Sep 2019 10:23:54 -0400

I've written before that my first exposure to computers was a simple text-based "Lunar Lander" game.

Earlier this year I did some research and I found the original LUNAR source code, which is in the FOCAL programming language, and some translations to BASIC.

I decided I needed to port this …

Blitz

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 14 May 2019 19:04:41 -0400

Last week we had to say goodbye to our nine-year-old Miniature Schnauzer, Blitz.

She was such a sweet, playful dog. She always had a confused-but-curious expression on her face, and big floppy ears. She always pranced when she walked around outside.

Many mornings, we would wrestle. She would pose in …

TSCP Translated to Rust

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 19:25:45 -0500

A couple of years ago, I wrote My First Chess Program. I wrote it in Swift. It was slow, due more to my lack of knowledge rather than due to any problems with Swift. While I was writing it, I decided not to study any other chess programs, but I …

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Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 17:55:41 -0500

It's been a couple of years since my last birthday post, and I want to get into the habit of blogging again, so here's another intermittently-annual State of the Kris post.

The last year has been pretty good, and the new year has started with some significant changes. I've been …

Review: Coursera's "Applied Data Science with Python" Specialization

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 12:58:42 -0400

I recently completed Coursera's Applied Data Science with Python specialization, and received the accompanying certificate. This is a review of my experience with the online courses.

This specialization is a series of five courses, each of which focuses on some aspect of using Python for data-science applications. Each course is …

Everything on the Internet Is Not Directed at You

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 18:59:49 -0400

The Internet has made it easy for anyone to say whatever they want to say to a worldwide audience. This is great. Some people have decided that if they don't like something that somebody else has posted, it is their right and obligation to insult and attack those people. That's …

My White-Supremacist Childhood

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 18:30:00 -0400

I was born in North Dakota, but at the age of seven my family moved to Roswell, Georgia, a small (at that time) town north of Atlanta. I lived there until I went off to college. It was a nice place to live, full of nice people, but when I …

Thoughts After Charlottesville

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 17:14:00 -0400

After the Charlottesville incident this weekend, it is easy to denounce "Nazis" and "white supremacists" and think you're on the good side of things. That is missing the bigger picture.

People want to think "This is not who we are as Americans," but this is exactly who we are. White …

Adding a Jinja2 Filter with a Pelican Plugin

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 10:58:00 -0400

With my new blog setup, I decided to give Google AdSense a try. I don't have many regular readers, but I do have a few pages that attract search-engine traffic. So, to monetize those older pages without shoving ads in my regular readers' faces, I decided to show ads on …

Re-Cloudifying

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 08:00:00 -0400

With my blog rebuild out of the way, my next task was to replace my old 2010-era Amazon EC2 t1.micro instance with a new less-expensive t2.nano instance. Without the blog, my EC2 needs are minimal, and the nano instances are really cheap.

My plan was to poke around …

Achievement Unlocked: Colonoscopy

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 16:44:26 -0400

When you turn 50, they make you get a colonoscopy. That doesn't seem fair.

But it really isn't too bad. The worst part is the "prep", which is a euphemistic way of saying "Spend a day on a clear-liquid diet, take a bunch of laxatives, then spend a few hours …

Simple NSMachPort Example

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 22:35:49 -0400

I recently needed to use NSMachPort for some interprocess communication on macOS. However, these days it is hard to find examples of how to use it in Apple's official documentation, as they are steering everyone toward XPC services and NSXPCConnection for sandboxed IPC.

So, I wrote my own simple example …

Rebuilding My Blog Again, with Pelican

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 15:00:00 -0400

I've moved this blog from a Drupal CMS running on an AWS EC2 instance to a statically generated set of pages hosted on GitHub Pages. If you're curious about the reasons and the process, read on.

For several years, my blog has been running on Drupal 6. Drupal seemed like …

My First Chess Program

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 19:07:16 -0400

When I was a kid, back in the 70's and 80's, I thought chess programs were the most sophisticated computer programs in the world. That was back when the average personal-computer chess program wasn't very good, and dedicated chess computers cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, so it seemed to …

50

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:27:46 -0500

So, suddenly, I'm 50 years old. Almost a quarter of my life behind me.

50 really doesn't seem that bad. 40 felt much more like an oh-man-I'm-old-and-have-wasted-my-life event. I'm much happier now than I was then. This has been a great decade for me. I met a wonderful woman, and …

What's Good on TCM This Week?

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 22:34:41 -0400

I like old movies. In the old days, we had TV stations known as "UHF channels" that showed lots of old movies all night long. But UHF channels are gone, and today all we have is the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel and website.

I like film noir, sci-fi, horror …

cxxforth: A Simple Forth Implementation in C++

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 11:05:48 -0500

Because implementing obsolete programming languages is a great use of my free time, I've created cxxforth, an implementation of Forth in C++.

Inspired by JONESFORTH, I wrote it in the style of a tutorial. The source code is automatically converted to a pretty-printed format: https://github.com/kristopherjohnson/cxxforth/blob …

A Gforth Interface to the wiringPi Library

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:50:16 -0500

I recently obtained a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino, and a model train set. This should keep me busy and out of trouble for a while.

My plan is to use the Arduino to read sensors and control the turnout switches on the track, but I think it is easier to …

Performing Privileged Operations in an OS X Application

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 04:16:27 -0500

I am currently developing an OS X application. The application needs to perform some operations that require root privileges (installing and uninstalling launchd daemons, sending signals to other users' processes, etc.) So I started looking for some documentation about how to do that. I figured it would take a few …

Marathon Aborted

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 14:32:31 -0500

A few months ago, I signed up for the Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon, which will take place this Saturday (November 14). I thought I would have adequate time to train, but it hasn't worked out that way. I ran a half marathon last week, with a time of 2:30 (not …

A Brainf__k compiler in C++

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 14:41:53 -0400

For fun, I wrote an interpreter for a programming language with a rude name, in C++.

It's available here: https://gist.github.com/kristopherjohnson/e5fc3d19c251dc561f62

There are other C++ interpreters for this language, but most of them look a lot more like C than like C++. My goal was to …

Labor Day Run for Autism Half Marathon 2015

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 22:57:04 -0400

Today I ran the "Labor Day Run for Autism Half Marathon" at Fowler Park/Big Creek Greenway.

My time was 2:37. Not as good as I had expected. I was hoping for a time in the 2:20-2:30 range. I ran out of gas around mile 9, and …

A Clock, using D3.js

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 09 Aug 2015 21:47:27 -0400

Hey, look! I made a clock! The Apple Watch is now obsolete.

I am learning how to use the D3.js library to do data visualizations. It doesn't really make sense to consider hour, minute, and second as data to be "visualized", but this was a simple exercise to learn …

Setting Up a Personal TiddlyWiki Server on OS X

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 12:17:28 -0400

For a new job, I decided to set up a personal wiki to keep notes. I wanted to keep it simple, meeting these requirements:

All the data is in a Dropbox folder (so it can be automatically synced between machines)
It must support Markdown syntax

After looking at the options …

Getting Root on Huawei U8665 Fusion 2 Phone

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:33:07 -0500

I've had an old Samsung Galaxy S Captivate phone, running Android 2.2, that I've used as a test device while developing Android apps. In my new job, I no longer need to support Android 2.2 (hooray!), but I do need to support Android 2.3 (boo!). I tried …

Monochrome Color Themes for Xcode and Sublime Text

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 15:38:05 -0500

A lot of programmers like brightly colored syntax-highlighting themes for their source code editors. I do not. I find colorful high-contrast themes to be fatiguing, distracting, and annoying, so I've gravitated toward low-contrast themes like Zenburn and Havenjark. But even those feel too "busy" for me.

I've been on a …

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Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 02:50:58 -0500

I'm writing this yearly update later than I usually do. A few things have been unsettled, and I didn't want to write until I had some idea how they would turn out.

We had been planning to buy the house we were living in, but that deal fell through in …

A Backup Restoration Story

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 03:17:16 -0500

For most of my computing lifetime, I didn't bother with backups. They were too much trouble, and back when it took 20 floppy disks to back up a Mac hard disk, they took too much time. But now with services like Time Machine, CrashPlan, Backblaze, Dropbox, and Google Drive, it …

The Good Old Days and Tiny BASIC

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 02:14:03 -0500

This week, we learned that Dr. Dobb's Journal is shutting down after 38 years. Admittedly, I haven't paid much attention to Dr. Dobb's for the past few years, but back when I was a kid who wanted to be a programmer, I anxiously awaited each monthly issue so that I …

SuwaneeForth: A Forth Implementation in Swift

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 15:43:13 -0500

Using a new high-level programming language to implement an old low-level language is a strange thing to do, but I've done just that. SuwaneeForth is an implementation of Forth interpreter, written in Swift. If you are interested in such a thing, you can find it here:

https://github.com/kristopherjohnson …

Markingbird: A Markdown Processor for Swift

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 12:43:35 -0400

Markingbird is a Markdown processor written in Swift for OS X and iOS. It is a translation/port of the MarkdownSharp processor used by the Stack Overflow website.

(If you have no idea what "Markdown" and "Swift" are, you can just stop reading now.)

Repository: https://github.com/kristopherjohnson/Markingbird …

F#'s Pipe-Forward Operator in Swift

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 01:09:09 -0400

Note: At WWDC 2015, Apple announced Swift 2, which includes changes and a new feature called "protocol extensions" that render much of the code below either irrelevant or incorrect. This article applies to Swift 1.x.

Apple's new Swift programming language isn't really a functional programming language. However, it does …

KJTipCalculator: A Simple iOS Swift App

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 15:16:43 -0400

As an experiment in using Apple's new Swift programming language, I whipped up a simple tip-calculator app for iOS 8.

Yes, the world really needs Yet Another Tip Calculator, and it also really needs Yet Another Swift App Example.

In addition to using Swift, the app also uses an embedded …

A Web Page for Reformatting JSON Text, using AngularJS

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 29 May 2014 03:49:54 -0400

A little over a year ago, I published A Web Page for Reformatting JSON Text, which is a simple web page for pretty-printing JSON data. I'm now learning AngularJS, so as an exercise I reimplemented the page using Angular rather than the original's jQuery.

This version is a little nicer …

OS X Server Local Websites for Web Developers

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 25 May 2014 12:10:59 -0400

OS X Server is now available free of charge for members of Apple's iOS Developer Program, so I have it installed on most of my machines. Unfortunately, having OS X Server installed complicates the use of the built-in local Apache web server which I use for web development. I've figured …

Zenburn for Xamarin Studio

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 20 May 2014 12:17:37 -0400

I've been playing around with Xamarin. Its IDE, Xamarin Studio, comes with a bunch of (IMHO) terrible color schemes, so I ported Zenburn to the Xamarin format.

You can find my Zenburn for Xamarin theme here: https://gist.github.com/kristopherjohnson/784360f9676b59766678

To use it, download the .json file, open …

2014 Publix Georgia Marathon

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 10:32:06 -0400

I finished a freaking marathon!

I ran the 2014 Publix Georgia Marathon in Atlanta on March 23. I got up at 4:00 AM, drove to the MARTA train station, and took the train to Centennial Park, where the race started and finished.

The weather was good for running a …

Setting Up ArcGIS Runtime SDK for iOS for Xcode Bot

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 16:48:55 -0500

I am working on an iPad app that uses the ArcGIS Runtime SDK for iOS. Esri provides an easy-to-use installer and instructions for setting up the SDK so that it can be used with Xcode.

The installer puts the SDK files in the user’s home directory, and the setup …

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Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 19 Jan 2014 19:17:58 -0500

Another annual State of the Kris message:

The biggest change for my family this year was moving from our little mountain cabin in Dahlonega to a house in Cumming. This puts us closer to the schools where Pebble teaches and where Bailey learns. Instead of spending two hours commuting per …

Garmin Forerunner 110 Blank Screen

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 15:16:47 -0500

I recently purchased a Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS watch to track my runs. I've been happy with it, but today when I plugged it into my computer after a run, the watch screen flashed "Saving activity" and then went blank. The watch was dead after that.

It had been fully …

The Running Thing

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 20:38:04 -0500

A year ago, I was proud of running a 10K. Since then, I've run two half marathons, and I am currently preparing to run the 2014 Publix Georgia Marathon in March.

Here are some things I've learned along the way:

Having a training plan is important. Just going out and …

Setting Up Windows, My Way

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:25:36 -0500

This is a companion piece to my Setting Up a New Mac, My Way entry. Thankfully, I haven't had to use Windows much in the past couple of years, but when I do have to set up a Windows machine for some task that requires it, I want to have …

The Easiest Programming Bug I Spent Way Too Much Time Trying to Solve

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:02:46 -0500

I ran across a question on Quora: What's the easiest programming bug you spent way too much time trying to solve?.

Here is my answer to that question. Some time during my first few years of programming, I wrote code similar to this little snippet and expected it to print …

My HTC One Review

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 15:08:33 -0400

I've been an iPhone user for the past five years, except for a few weeks in 2011 when I used an Android phone to see how good it was. At that time, my evaluation was that Android was a second-rate knock-off of iOS.

But, with the releases of Android 4 …

Trying Out CyanogenMod on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 04:35:59 -0400

Last year, I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 for use as an Android development/testing device. I didn't expect it to be good, and it wasn't. It was slow, clunky, and ugly in comparison to the iPad, just like every other Android tablet. But it was cheap …

Setting Up a New Mac, My Way

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:02:30 -0400

Over the past couple of weeks, I've set up a few Mac OS X machines to do development of iOS and Android apps. Doing this used to be an all-day chore, but things like app stores, iCloud, and Dropbox have streamlined the process a lot.

(I could streamline the process …

Transferring Ringtones from iTunes to an HTC One

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:21:46 -0400

I had some ringtones purchased from iTunes that I wanted to put onto my new HTC One. Googling for instructions found many hits, but many of those pages were a few years old, so the instructions didn't work anymore, or they didn't work with the HTC One, or were six-minute-long …

Solving "Symbol not found: _Perl_Gthr_key_ptr" When Running git-svn on Certain Unnamed Operating System Beta Versions

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:32:29 -0400

Let's say that you are using a beta version of a new operating system that you can't name because it is covered by a non-disclosure agreement, and you have also installed the newest version of its development tools, which are also covered by NDA, and when you try to run …

Customizing Android Action Bar for Edit Mode

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 13:06:38 -0400

I spent a long time trying to get a contextual action bar (CAB) working for an editing mode in an Android app I'm developing. My goal was to have a CAB appear whenever the user started changing field values on a screen, and the user would tap the Done button …

Removing a Broken Lightning Connector Plug from an iPad or iPhone

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 18:20:32 -0400

Newer models of the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch use the Lightning connector instead of the old 30-pin dock connectors. The Lightning connector is smaller and you don't have to worry about inserting it upside-down, so on the whole this is a good change. However, the connector plug is not …

Android SDK Tools 22.0.1 Considered Harmful

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 29 May 2013 23:43:08 -0400

After finishing up some work on an iOS app today, it was time to go make equivalent changes to the Android port of that app. "I'll just update my Android SDK before I get to work," I said (to myself). I opened the Android SDK Manager and let it update …

UIColor Category for Specifying Packed RGB Values

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:36:53 -0400

iOS's UIColor class makes it pretty easy to specify a color using red, green, blue (RGB) and alpha components:

 // set pale yellow color
 label.textColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:1.0
                                   green:1.0
                                    blue:0.5
                                   alpha:1.0];

However, as with many Cocoa API's, it's pretty verbose. Web developers would …

Death, Numbers, and Risk

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:18:30 -0400

Here are some numbers that many people don't know, or don't want to think about:

There are approximately 6.9 billion people in the world. On average,

about 55 million people die each year,
about 1.05 million people die each week,
about 151,000 people die each day,
about …

Home Depot Two-Year Replacement Plan Doesn't

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 23:09:28 -0400

When I bought a Yard Machines lawn mower from Home Depot last year, I paid for a 2-year repair/replacement plan. I'm pretty sure the plan was presented to me with language like "If it stops working, you just bring it back and we'll replace it." I've had some bad …

Finding the Answers

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:44:43 -0400

Episode #45 of the Stack Exchange podcast featured Eric Lippert, who got some great advice from his first manager at Microsoft:

I want you to be a recognized industry expert on something. ... But don't pick something that's too big. ... Find a source of questions, answer every question that you know …

iOS and Android Icon Sizes

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:39:24 -0400

Every once in a while, I have to tell a graphic designer all the sizes needed for iOS and Android icons. So I'm putting together a summary here for easy reference.

iOS

For more details on requirements and guidelines for iOS app icons, see iOS Human Interface Guidelines: Icons and …

REST Client Testing for Google Chrome

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:59:15 -0400

After years of using curl to test web interfaces, like cavemen did, I've finally started using more sophisticated tools.

There are a couple of applications for Google Chrome that I like:

They have similar feature sets. Postman is prettier and a bit easier to use, but …

Half Marathon Denied

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 06:34:31 -0400

I was supposed to run the Berry Half Marathon today. This would have been my first half marathon, and I've been training for the past two months to run it.

Unfortunately, the event was cancelled due to lightning and poor course conditions after several hours of thunderstorms. So all I …

A Web Page for Reformatting JSON Text

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 22:57:23 -0500

After I published my OS X Automator Service for Reformatting JSON Text, one commenter said that he always uses http://jsonformat.com/. I have used that, but I hate the output it produces. Its output is more readable than JSON with all the whitespace stripped out, but not by much …

An OS X Automator Service for Reformatting JSON Text

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:35:11 -0500

Note: This is an old post. I now use jq (http://stedolan.github.io/jq/) instead of the formatjson Node script described below, and I recommend that you do too.

I had some JSON files that were not indented consistently. I edit these files by hand, so I wanted a …

Git GUI Clients for OS X

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:55:54 -0500

I have recently evaluated a few Git GUI apps for OS X. Here are my impressions.

SourceTree

http://www.sourcetreeapp.com

Pros:

Free
Supports Mercurial repositories
Supports Subversion repositories (via git-svn)
Supports git-flow
Information-rich display layout (but some say it is too complicated)
Also available for Windows

Cons:

Least attractive …

iOS UI Automation Cheatsheet

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:00:46 -0500

I have just learned about Apple's UI Automation testing framework. Unfortunately, I don't have an iOS project to work on at the moment, so I am probably going to forget all about it. This is my cheatsheet. It may not help you at all.

Tutorials

http://blog.manbolo.com/2012 …

Amazon Marketplace 5-Star Rating Extortion

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:11:56 -0500

I recently bought my wife a coat from an Amazon Marketplace seller. We are happy with the coat, but I was troubled when I saw this notice bundled with it:

Leave a 5-Star, Positive Review ~ Receive a Free One Year Warranty!*

Dear Valued Customer,

If you are COMPLETELY SATISFIED with …

"Takers"

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0500

There is one hot-button issue that will always draw me into a rant: the assertion that anyone who draws a paycheck from the government is a "taker" rather than a "maker".

My wife is a science teacher in a public school. She worked her way through college and obtained a …

DirecTV Customer Service Sucks, and They Are Watching Me

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 03:08:31 -0500

This past weekend, two of our DirecTV satellite receivers failed. The failures were unrelated: one stopped working after the magic smoke leaked out of the vents; the other kept rebooting itself and scanning its disk, without ever actually starting up.

My wife called DirecTV and told them about the problems …

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Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:43:20 -0500

Another year behind me. Not a bad year.

I picked up a new client this year, and reduced my time spent working with the client I've had for the past couple of years. The new client provides opportunities for more interesting work. I've been able to do more mobile and …

From Couch Potato to Running a 10K in a Few Months

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:46:31 -0500

In August, I started running after a few years of sitting on the couch. I ran the Peachtree Road Race back in 2007, then stopped running completely shortly thereafter. My post-40 physical decline has been distressing, so I decided I needed to get back into doing something active.

Just as …

Embracing Customization and Automation

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:00:59 -0500

During the first decade-or-so of my career (the 90's), I had to use a lot of different computers. I worked on half a dozen different operating systems, and during the course of a day it was common to use four or five different computers, only one or two of which …

Node.js Cheatsheet

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:54:01 -0500

I am learning about node.js. This is my cheatsheet. It may not be useful to you at all.

Also see My JavaScript Cheatsheet.

Documentation

API Docs: http://nodejs.org/api/
Debugger: http://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html
Cluster: http://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/cluster.html
Up and Running …

Havenjark Color Theme for Xcode 4

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 11:59:34 -0400

I've been experimenting with low-contrast color themes in my source-code editors. For a while, I thought I had settled on Zenburn. However, I recently ran across Havenjark in the Eclipse Color Themes plugin, and I decided it is perfection.

The only problem was that, while I could find Havenjark theme …

KJFlashlight

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:54:30 -0400

I got fed up with the complexities of the various iPhone flashlight apps I've tried, so I whipped up my own dead-simple flashlight app.

It has three buttons that control the LED on the back of the phone:

On
Off
Flash (once per second)

That's it.

My hope is that …

Apple Product Names

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:29:00 -0400

Correct: iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Mac, MacBook, Apple

Incorrect: IPOD, Iphone, I-Phone, IFone, i-PAD, EyePad, Ipadd, I-Toons, MAC, MAC Book, McIntosh, APPLE, AAPL

(Don't be an idiot. This isn't complicated.)

Re-attaching an iMac Stand After VESA Mount Use

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:48:38 -0400

We recently purchased a new iMac to replace a old iMac. The old iMac was attached to a wall mount using Apple's VESA Mount Adapter, so I had to remove the old iMac from that adapter and attach the new iMac to it. That went fine, but then I had …

Downloading an Image from Gravatar Using the Command Line

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 20:28:08 -0400

I am signed up for the app.net alpha, and wanted to upload my avatar picture. Unfortunately, I can't find my avatar picture anywhere on my computer.

Gravatar is a free service that allows you to save your avatar (picture) for use by multiple websites. Gravatar has a copy of …

Job Title: Architect

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:36:34 -0400

What follows is from an actual job opportunity that was presented to me. It has been edited for brevity and to remove identifying information. I also cleaned up typos and broken grammar (recruiters apparently never read these things before sending them to candidates).

Job Title: Architect

Responsibilities:

Drive Solution Architectures …

Distributing a Custom iOS B2B App

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:22:47 -0400

I recently went through the process of distributing a free custom B2B app in the App Store. I hit a few snags, and I found very little information about the process, or help in online forums, and Apple Support assistance was very slow. So I'm documenting what I learned here …

Entity Framework Cheatsheet

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:46:54 -0400

This is my cheatsheet for using Microsoft's Entity Framework API.

(The existence of this page should not be taken as an endorsement of Entity Framework. It's not something you should learn more about if you don't have to. It's just another complicated ORM framework with its own quirks and annoyances …

What Siri Is Good For

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:11:53 -0400

A recent study indicates that Apple's Siri doesn't perform very well when searching for information. I think most people who use Siri would agree, but "searching" is only one thing that Siri does.

I don't use Siri much for general question-asking. ("Siri, is it raining?") Instead, I use Siri as …

HTML Man pages

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 02:31:25 -0400

If you've used UNIX-based systems, you're probably aware of man pages. And you know that they suck.

To make them a little less sucky, I wrote a little shell script called hman which displays a man page as HTML in the browser, rather than forcing you to use less. Here …

Bash Scripting Cheatsheet

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 15:53:11 -0400

These are the half-dozen-or-so things I need to re-learn whenever I have to write a Bash script.

(And yes, I do know that the cool kids use zsh or fish instead of bash. You don't need to point that out to me.)

Good Online Resources

My Setup

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 22:50:14 -0400

I'm a fan of The Setup, a website containing interviews with people about the tools they use to do their jobs. It is just "productivity porn", but I find it interesting.

As a tribute, here is my own "interview" for The Setup, using the standard four questions. I don't expect …

20 Years Ago

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:22:21 -0400

It was 20 years ago this month that I graduated from college and got my first professional programming job. It has me reminiscing about what the computer programming profession was like before the Internet.

I had used the Internet in college. However, back then we didn't have web browsers. We …

Want to Develop iOS Apps? Learn Objective-C.

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 06 May 2012 14:41:42 -0400

As an iOS software developer, I am often asked whether "we" (a team I'm working with, or someone I'm advising) should avoid using Objective-C and instead use a higher-level or easier-to-learn programming language. In general, my answer is "No". The rest of this post explains why.

The Problem

A bit …

Sorting Entries in a PList by Key

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:22:11 -0400

My iOS applications use property list (plist) files to specify configuration parameters and other stuff. I was trying to do some comparison and merging of these plists, but was tripped up because the keys were in different order in different files.

So I whipped up a little Python script to …

Cold Science Fiction

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:30:55 -0400

I read a lot of science fiction (SF) in my adolescent and teenage years, but I got bored with it in college, and stopped reading it. Actually, I didn't get bored, I got annoyed with it. At the time, I couldn't describe exactly what it was that was annoying me …

KJSimpleBinding

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:15:47 -0400

Mac OS X provides a pretty nice data-binding technology for developers, called Cocoa bindings. Unfortunately, the Cocoa bindings mechanism is not available to iOS developers, so iOS developers have to spend a lot of time writing code to keep user-interface elements and data in sync.

However, while Cocoa Bindings is …

KJGridLayout

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:40:19 -0400

Xcode's Interface Builder is a pretty good user-interface layout tool, especially for simple situations. However, it is not the best tool for every job. Sometimes you have to write code to dynamically create user interface elements or to move them around as the view is resized.

When you do this …

MacBooks and Caps Lock and Control

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:46:44 -0500

I learned to touch-type over 30 years ago, on an IBM Selectric typewriter. I'm a fast and accurate typist, compared to most programmers. I've always considered typing to be a basic skill that all programmers should take seriously. What goes on in your head is more important than how fast …

My Python Cheatsheet

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:25:44 -0500

Here's another programming-language cheatsheet. It's been a couple of years since I've done any Python programming, and now I'm taking the online CS373: Programming a Robotic Car course, which uses Python for quizzes and homework assignments, so I have to get back up to speed.

As always, this is the …

My Android Development Cheatsheet

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:10:44 -0500

If I had my druthers, I'd spend all my time developing mobile apps. I've always been fascinated with pocket-sized computers, and have owned many through the years. Unfortunately, for most of my life such devices have been little more than toys, and so I've had to focus my expertise on …

Measuring Elapsed Time in C# Methods

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:12:02 -0500

When determining why some damned thing in my .NET programs is taking so damned long, it is useful to be able to look at the elapsed time for various sections of code. The straightforward way to do this is to create an instance of System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch, start it, do …

45

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:06:22 -0500

It's another one of those "5" years. I'm now halfway to 90. 90 sounds old, but once upon a time, 45 sounded old too.

The year has not been easy. We lost my maternal grandmother, Ann Woods, in August. I have many good memories of time spent with her up …

Creating .NET Remoting IPC Channels

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:36:55 -0500

Yet another C# code snippet. I'm developing a service and an accompanying UI that always run on the same physical box, and it was suggested that I implement the communication between them using .NET Remoting and the IPC channel type, which is a supposedly-easy way to get processes on the …

Configuring WebDAV and Digest Authentication for Ubuntu

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:42:40 -0500

I'm looking at using WPKG as a mechanism for distributing software updates to client workstations. WPKG appears to be a pretty nice system, but it has one big downside: one has to set up a WebDAV-enabled server if the updates are to be pulled from the Internet instead of from …

Deserializing Objects from XML in C#

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:22:03 -0500

Here's another C# code snippet that takes me way too much time to recreate by just reading the documentation.

This is a simple example of a class that can be serialized to/from XML. In this case the "ServerConfig" XML string can contain a list of servers, looking like this …

Pretty-formatting XML in C#

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:13:28 -0500

I had a need to convert an XML string to a nice, indented format. It was a little more complicated than I expected, so I'm posting this snippet here where I can find it again when I need it.

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml …

Code Reuse Is Not Lazy

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:16:16 -0400

Stack Overflow is an amazing resource for computer programmers. I've asked a lot of questions there, and answered a lot of questions there, and I've found the answers to lots and lots of questions that someone else has already asked. Participating in Stack Overflow has been great.

However, there have …

Steve Jobs

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:08:24 -0400

It's OK to have heroes, right?

I didn't think I had any heroes, but when Steve Jobs passed away last week, it hit me harder than expected. I didn't cry, I didn't go into a funk, but I was sad and felt like I'd lost something.

We idealize our heroes …

My Visit to Android-land

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 23:50:52 -0400

I've been a happy iPhone and iPad user for a while, but I'm currently involved in developing Android applications, so I decided to buy an Android phone to use for a few weeks. It's important to understand the user-interface conventions and user expectations for whatever platform you are developing for …

KJMenuTableViewController - iOS Menus Made Easy

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:22:17 -0400

I have a new open-source library on Github for use by iOS developers: KJMenuTableViewController.

KJMenuTableViewController is an Xcode project that contains set of classes that simplifies the creation of "menus" in iOS applications using UITableViewController.

The UITableViewController class is a generic mechanism for presenting a scrollable list of rows of …

Beware the Lure of the iOS UIWebView

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:32:03 -0400

Apple's iOS SDK provides a class, UIWebView, that provides a simple way to display HTML content in an iOS application. Many apps use UIWebView to display web pages, online help, and other formatted content.

For the basic purpose of displaying HTML content, it works pretty well. However, as it appears …

My JavaScript Cheatsheet

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:49:43 -0400

A couple of times per year, I have to work on something that requires me to write some JavaScript. When I do, I have to reacquaint myself with the language by skimming through JavaScript: The Good Parts and finding some good online reference documentation.

In an effort to reduce the …

(268242) Pebble

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 23 May 2011 00:12:11 -0400

My wife has had a minor planet named after her. This is the official naming citation, written by the planet's discoverer, Jim Bedient:

(268242) Pebble = 2005 JW1 Discovered 2005 May 4 by J. Bedient at Haleakala-Faulkes Telescope North. Pebble Johnson (b. 19xx) is an innovative teacher of middle-school science and …

Do We Still Need Programmers?

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:16:47 -0400

When reading descriptions of how software is produced, I often wonder what role programmers play. Programmers used to be the people who made software, but now a lot of other people are involved and claim credit for doing the work.

There has to be an "architect" who guides the overall …

UTF-8

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:48:23 -0400

Matt Gallagher's "User interface strings in Cocoa" post is good for its overall purpose (telling people how to use NSLocalizedString()), but I especially like this little embedded rant:

A quick swipe at almost everybody: UTF-8 has been around since 1993 and Unicode 2.0 since 1996; if you have created …

The Apple Store Needs a Checkout Counter

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:49:18 -0400

The Apple Store is a great place to go if you want to play with new Apple products or get help at the Genius Bar. But if you go there to buy something, the experience is confusing and humiliating.

Everyone knows how the process of buying something at a store …

What I've Learned about iOS Development

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:43:00 -0400

I've been playing around with development for Mac OS X and iOS for a few years. I've had a pretty good grasp of how Cocoa and UIKit worked, and I've written some simple apps, but for the past month I've been working on my first Real iOS Application. I've had …

App Idea: Prose Translation Assistant

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 02:03:21 -0500

(This is just an idea. As I explain my post about Why I Loved The Social Network, I think ideas are cheap, so if you want to "steal" this idea and make the app, I heartily support you.)

A friend has started a personal project to translate the works of …

Why I Loved The Social Network

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 01:41:21 -0500

I'm writing this the night before the Oscars, but that is not why I'm writing. I only saw three of the films nominated for Best Picture: The King's Speech, True Grit, and The Social Network. While I enjoyed The King's Speech and True Grit,, I haven't thought about them since …

Setting Up for Use of Microsoft Symbol Server

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:13:30 -0500

When debugging native Win32 code, it is useful to have the debug symbols for all of Microsoft's DLLs. The easiest way to set this up is to just set an environment variable before starting Visual Studio (or other Microsoft debugging tools):

set _NT_SYMBOL_PATH=srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com …

Visual Studio 2008 Code Snippet for Inserting a String.Format() call

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:57:51 -0500

Over the past year I've been (re-)learning how to use Visual Studio 2008. I did a lot of work in the 90's and early 00's with Visual Studios 5, 6, and 2003, but then I had a few years away from Windows development, and I've had limited experience with …

AppleScript for Bulk Conversion of PowerPoint Documents to Keynote

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:47:43 -0500

The instructor in one of my MBA-prerequisite classes distributed a set of PowerPoint presentations as course notes. I want to review these on my iPad, so I needed to convert them to Keynote.

This is pretty easy to do manually on a Mac: Just right-click the PPT file, select Open …

Air Display vs. MaxiVista

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:19:24 -0500

Most of the time, I work at the Windows 7 computer in my home office with a dual-monitor setup. A lot of non-geeks have never used a dual-monitor setup: you will just have to trust me when I tell you that, for a programmer or any other person who needs …

44

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:49:56 -0500

Another year past. Highlights of the past year:

We've acquired two more dogs this year: "Blitz," a Miniature Schnauzer, and "Lucy," one of a litter of puppies from our Yorkies Boo and Tweezer. This brings the total to five. We gave away four puppies from two litters this year. One …

To MBA, or Not to MBA, That Is the Question

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:53:47 -0500

I've starting taking some business classes that are prerequisites for starting an MBA program in the fall. So you may be seeing a lot more business-school-related musings than computer-programming-related musings for a while.

Why Go Back to School?

I haven't made the final decision about whether I am actually going …

Now Running on Amazon EC2

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 23:13:19 -0500

This blog is now running in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). I hope that nobody notices any difference.

Migrating the blog over to the new server was relatively straightforward, using Drupal's Backup and Migrate module. After getting Drupal set up on the new server, I just copied all my …

Setting Up Drupal 6 on Ubuntu 10.10 on EC2

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:14:23 -0500

For several years, I've been using pretty-cheap web hosting services for my blog, my corporate website, and other webby things. However, I'm pretty sure that it would be even cheaper to use Amazon EC2, especially as they now offer free usage for a year. I also like the ease with …

Find-My-iPhone Success Story

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:24:23 -0500

My wife, stepson, and I carpooled today. I picked them up at school and we made the 45-minute drive back home. As we parked the car, my wife noticed that she didn't have her iPhone.

She initially thought she had left it back in the teachers' lounge, so she called …

PowerShell and Unicode

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:01:58 -0400

After being away from the Windows developer world for a few years, I have been pleased to find some of the nice things that Microsoft has given us. Visual Studio has some really nice refactoring capabilities. The Windows 7 user experience rivals OS X. And as an alternative to the …

Workflow for Remote CVS, Local Git

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:31:32 -0400

One of my clients uses a CVS repository for all its source code. People recognize that there are better options available than CVS, but it's been cranking along fine for 15 years, and they see no compelling reason to change.

However, I really like being able to commit incremental changes …

Core Animation Performance Tips

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:36:44 -0400

In my copious free time, I've been working on a videogame for the iPad. Friends and family may interject here that it seems like I'm always working on a videogame in my free time, but I've never actually finished one. This time is different. Really.

All of my personal projects …

My iPad Review

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:30:36 -0400

So, I've had an iPad for about a month and a half. Here are my impressions:

Overall, it's really nice. It fills the need for a little Internet-connected device that lets me watch video, read books, read online news, and browse the web. I used to keep my old 13-inch …

Looking for iPad Application Beta Testers

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:20:11 -0400

Some time in the next few weeks, I hope to have an iPad game ready for submission to the App Store. I am looking for people to help me test the app.

You need to have the following:

An iPad
Somebody with whom to play the game (it's a two-player …

Internet Emergency Checklist

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:06:02 -0400

When the power goes out, nobody asks me how to make it work again. But if the Internet goes down for three seconds, everyone in the house is yelling at me, telling me I need to MAKE IT WORK! NOW!

Most Internet problems are due to issues that have nothing …

New Job, Old Job

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:31:54 -0400

For the last seven years, I've been working with a company that does gaming-related stuff (lotteries, casinos, race tracks). I worked for a few years as an employee, and later as a contractor. Like all jobs, it's had its ups and downs, but on the whole it was a good …

Shiny iPhone Buttons Without Photoshop

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:16:43 -0500

Newcomers to iPhone development are sometimes surprised at how ugly the standard button controls are. They quickly learn that they need a graphic artist to create a nice-looking button image in Photoshop and then attach that to the buttons. However, in this tutorial, I'll show how to create nice shiny …

JacksOrBetter for iPhone Updated

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:10:27 -0500

Version 1.1 of JacksOrBetter for the iPhone and iPod Touch is now available, and it's still free. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can get it from the App Store.

This version has a lot of cosmetic improvements over version 1.0. Version 1.0 was …

iPhone Sample Code: Tiles

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:28:21 -0500

As an exercise in using the Core Animation API, I've implemented a little iPhone app that reproduces the behavior of the iPhone home screen's icon reorganization interface. (You know, dragging the wiggly icons around.) You can download my sample code to see how it works. Some descriptions of the highlights …

Thoughts on the iPad

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:55:57 -0500

I like the iPad. A few friends and acquaintances accuse me of being stupid and easily fascinated by sparkly objects. Rather than have the same argument over and over again, I'm writing all my thoughts and predictions here. I will speak no further on the subject until I actually own …

43

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:46:13 -0500

Another year older. I'm solidly in my forties now. It's not too bad.

We've had a few additions to the family in the past year: we bought two more Yorkshire Terriers, named Boo and Tweezer. About a week and half ago, Boo gave birth to a puppy whom we've named …

Objectified: Great Documentary

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:45:00 -0500

I just finished watching Objectified, and can wholeheartedly recommend it to audiences of all ages.

Objectified is about industrial designers. Those are the people who design all the stuff we buy. Look around you: that desk you're sitting at was designed by somebody. The mouse and keyboard were designed by …

JacksOrBetter as a Web App

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:38:01 -0500

A little over a year ago, I created my first iPhone app, JacksOrBetter. As an exercise in learning CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery, I've created a web-based version of JacksOrBetter.

http://jacksorbetterpoker.appspot.com/

It should work on any decent web browser (that is, one that has good implementations of JavaScript …

Bruce Schneier on Aviation Security

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:21:20 -0500

Computer security expert Bruce Schneier has a really nice opinion piece on CNN:

Is aviation security mostly for show?

One could wonder whether a computer-security expert is qualified to write about aviation security or national security, but what he says makes a lot of sense.

Despite fearful rhetoric to the …

Ten New Year's Resolutions for Everyone

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:08:20 -0500

Being the arrogant lummox that I am, I've taken it upon myself to make a list of ten New Year's resolutions for everyone to follow.

Be a better parent. Make time to spend with children (even if you have no children of your own).
Be a better spouse. Are you …

Detecting Bullshit on the Internet

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:10:23 -0500

It's amazing what people will believe. At least once a week, I'm forwarded a piece of information from a seemingly reasonable friend or family member that seems ridiculous. Obama is a Muslim! The Department of Homeland Security is setting up death camps! Eat whatever you want and still lose weight …

Are Web Apps the new BASIC?

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:38:05 -0500

I often wonder how kids today get into programming. When I was a kid, and got my first computer, I spent a lot of time typing in the programs from David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games. After typing in the code for the games and playing them a bit, I'd start …

Playing Catch-Up

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:12:21 -0500

Early in my career, I prided myself on my ability to absorb a lot of information and stay up-to-date on programming tools and techniques. I learned C++ before any of my colleagues did, and knew more about its intricacies than they did. I implemented ActiveX control containers before most people …

Are Web Developers Real Programmers?

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:23:01 -0500

The native-vs.-webapp hubbub from a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about why "web developers" are looked down upon by "real programmers."

I'll admit that I've held that prejudice myself. I looked at client-side web development back in the mid 1990's and decided that it wasn't for me …

Quick-and-Dirty Guide to QUnit

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:07:52 -0500

I'm playing around with JavaScript in my spare time, and have started creating a web app. As I usually do, particularly when learning something new, I am using a test-driven development approach. I looked at a few JavaScript unit-testing frameworks, and decided to go with QUnit, the testing framework used …

Stack Overflow Careers

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:38:08 -0500

Finding a good job, or finding good employees, has always sucked. The guys at Stack Overflow are trying to make it suck a little less with their new service: Stack Overflow Careers.

What differentiates Stack Overflow Careers from all the other job-board web sites is that candidates' CV's are linked …

Not Quite NaNoWriMo Review

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:38:23 -0500

Last month, I committed to do a lot of writing. Let's see how I did.

I was going to write one blog entry per day. I actually did 22 entries during the 30-day month of November. Not 100%, but not too bad.

My other commitment was to get a new …

Switched from Firefox to Safari

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:31:45 -0500

For the past week, I've been using Safari instead of Firefox, and I've decided to make the change permanent.

Why? Firefox is just too slow. Remember the good old days when Firefox was the leaner, faster, less-bloated alternative to Netscape Navigator? Those days are in the past. Firefox now takes …

JavaScript: The Good Parts

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:57:34 -0500

As a result of the recent hubbub about web apps, I decided to get myself up to speed on JavaScript and CSS. Knowing Douglas Crockford's reputation as the JavaScript guru, I read his book, entitled JavaScript: The Good Parts.

It's a good book. The basic idea is that while JavaScript …

The Houben Case and Facilitated Communication

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:08:20 -0500

The media has been reporting that a Belgian man who has been in a coma for 23 years is now able to communicate thanks to "assistance" from an aide who holds his hand while he types on a keyboard (or actually, while they type on a keyboard).

Here are a …

iPhone Video Output

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:30:19 -0500

A common problem for iPhone developers is demonstrating the apps they've developed to others. Showing it on an actual device only works well if you are showing it to one or two people. Showing it in the iPhone Simulator running on a Mac takes a lot of setup, and may …

Native Apps vs. Web Apps

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:08:18 -0500

This week, there was a lot of chatter in the blogosphere about the prospect of writing web apps for the iPhone instead of developing native apps.

The furor started with Peter-Paul Koch's profanity-laden rant entitled "Apple is not evil. iPhone developers are stupid.". In this post, PPK asserts that most …

Android: Maybe Not

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:01:49 -0500

A couple of days ago, I said I was considering giving up on iPhone development and trying Android instead. Here are my further thoughts along those lines.

First, I downloaded the Android SDK, did a little reading, and went through the Hello, world! tutorial to bring up an app in …

Deal on Photoshop Elements 8

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:41:09 -0500

If you're one of the people (like me) who needs to occasionally do some image editing, but who doesn't want to spend a few hundred bucks on Photoshop, you may want to check out Photoshop Elements 8.

Adobe has a deal on it right now: $20 off the normal price …

Switching Away from Apple?

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:44:32 -0500

I've enjoyed using my Apple products, but I'm considering a switch. I find myself drawn back to Windows on my desktop, and to an Android mobile device.

There was a time that the Macintosh was clearly superior to the competition in every way except price. But that was a while …

Google Wave

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:17:00 -0500

Thanks to a former co-worker, I got an invite for Google Wave.

The biggest problem right now with Google Wave is finding other people to interact with. Chances are that few of your family, friends, or co-workers have access to Wave yet. I've set up a public wave for readers …

Sony PRS-500 Upgrade

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:38:54 -0500

As mentioned in a recent post, my wife bought me a Sony PRS-500 Reader, and I like it a lot. I've just found out about an upgrade offer: PRS-500 owners can trade in their readers for discount on a Reader Pocket or Reader Touch. The offer expires April 10, 2010 …

The Go Programming Language

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:07:48 -0500

There's a new programming language out there: Go. There are lots of ways to describe it, but basically it's got Python-esque syntax and C++-esque performance. It's statically typed, but is designed to feel more like a dynamic language. It has garbage collection.

Based on its pedigree, I expect this …

iPhone OS Filename Case Sensitivity

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:51:59 -0500

I hit a little snag while adding a feature to an iPhone app today. I added this code to load a logo to be displayed in a view:

UIImage *logoImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"Icon.png"];

This worked fine in the iPhone Simulator, so I thought I was done. I loaded the …

Introducing Kids to Programming

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:28:52 -0500

No time for a real blog entry today, but instead of nothing, here are some links to really cool toys that kids (and curious adults) can play with to learn about programming and multimedia:

Automator Service: Copy Current UTC Timestamp to Clipboard

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:12:31 -0500

Yeah, I know, you're probably getting sick of these Automator services. But I really do create a new one of these practically every day to make my life a little easier, and maybe some of these will be useful to others.

This one puts a UTC timestamp on the clipboard …

Authenticating with Google App Engine

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:01:56 -0500

I've finally got around to doing some work on that iPhone application that I've committed to finishing this month.

On days I do a lot of work on the app, I don't feel obligated to work too hard on the blog, but I will post a little something about whatever …

How Does One Become a Good Programmer?

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:03:52 -0500

This is a quote I like:

The really good programmers spend a lot of time programming. I haven't seen very good programmers who don't spend a lot of time programming. If I don't program for two or three days, I need to do it. And you get better at it …

Automator Service: Scale Images by 75%

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:17:14 -0500

Here is yet another Snow Leopard Automator service: This one takes an image file and scales it down to 75% of its original size. This is great for screenshots, as all the text is still readable at that size, but you can put it in a web page or document …

Automator Service: Copy File Paths to Clipboard

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:12:31 -0500

Here's another Snow Leopard Automator-based service: It takes the Finder selection and puts the file paths on the clipboard, for easy pasting into command lines or scripts.

How to Use It

In the Finder, select one or more files or folders.
From the Services menu, select Copy Files Paths to …

Mac Software for Software Developers

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:22:23 -0500

A fellow developer who is getting his first Mac asked me what software he should get. Here is a list of Mac software that I, as a software developer, find useful.

First, let's look at what apps come in the box, at no extra charge:

Basic contacts, calendar, and email …

The "Easy Part" vs. the "Hard Part" of Software Development

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:58:57 -0500

In his essay "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?," Neil Gaiman relates a common situation faced by authors:

Every published writer has had it - the people who come up to you and tell you that they've Got An Idea. And boy, is it a Doozy. It's such a Doozy that …

Easy Gradient Backgrounds for UITextViewCells

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:28:23 -0500

When you create a table-view-based iPhone app, by default you get tables with plain white rows. But all the cool kids are making apps with 3D-ish gradient backgrounds. You want to make those kinds of apps too, right? This article explains how.

Overview

Making table cells with custom backgrounds is …

"Speak Count of Words on Clipboard" Automator Service

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:43:35 -0500

As part of my "write a blog entry every day during November" commitment, I considered imposing a minimum word limit for each entry. I've decided against that, because I don't want to feel pressure to add filler, but before deciding that, I created an Automator service that would help me …

Not Quite NaNoWriMo

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:28:33 -0500

I've often dreamed of participating in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, in which people pledge to write a novel during the month of November. Unfortunately, I'm not really a novel-writing guy. I could maybe write a short story or two, but I'm just not enough of a writer to …

Getting Into iPhone Development

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:46:41 -0400

I know some people who are interested in getting into iPhone application development. There is a lot of advice out there. Here's my advice for experienced developers who start out knowing nothing about iPhone or Cocoa development:

If you don't know the C programming language, learn it.
Read Matt Gemmell's …

A Little Service That Converts Files to EPUB Format

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:26:19 -0400

My wife recently gave me a nice gift: a Sony Reader device. She'd been watching me read books using the Kindle for iPhone app, and felt sorry for me because I had to read from such a small screen. The Reader is really nice. (Thanks, honey.)

Now I'm learning all …

Building Emacs from Source for Mac OS X

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:29:05 -0400

There are a few binary Emacs packages for OS X floating around out there, but I always build it myself from the sources. This usually results in an Emacs that works the way I expect, rather than the way some "helpful" distributor thinks it ought to work.

I'll assume you …

The iTunes UI Sucks

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:13:41 -0400

I like most of Apple's products, but iTunes is a very dark corner of the Mac universe.

For example, here is what you have to do to download updates to your iPhone apps:

Click the Applications link in the upper-left corner of the navigation pane.
Move the mouse over to …

We Loves the Preciousss

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:41:21 -0400

It's not always easy to be an Apple fanboy: read "In Nomine Jobs, et Woz, et Spiritus Schiller" by Merlin Mann

I've installed Snow Leopard on my old 13-inch white Macbook (which I don't use for anything important). I've had no problems with it, but I'm going to wait a …

Menubar Countdown 1.2 Works with Snow Leopard

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:49:28 -0400

Menubar Countdown, my Mac OS X countdown timer application, has been tested with 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it seems to work just fine.

(But if anyone finds otherwise, please let me know.)

MINI Cooper S Convertible Review

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:47:08 -0400

My wife and I bought a MINI Cooper S convertible almost a year ago. These are my thoughts about it:

The MINI Cooper convertible is the Apple Macintosh of cars. It's very expensive in comparison to other models with similar performance and features, and it has a lot of annoying …

Remoting.Corba

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:04:00 -0400

[Note: The Remoting.Corba project is "dead", and has not been active for several years. If you need .NET-CORBA interoperability, I recommend checking out IIOP.NET. Archived Remoting.Corba documentation is still available via The Wayback Machine.]

Remoting.Corba is an open-source .NET library that provides interoperability between the .NET …

Changing Background Color and Section Header Text Color in a Grouped-style UITableView

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:10:40 -0400

While working on an iPhone application, I decided I wanted to change the colors of the background and section headers of a UITableView with the UITableViewStyleGrouped style. It took a lot more work than I expected, so I'm sharing what I learned with anyone else who needs to do this …

Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2000 Setup and Review

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:40:10 -0400

I have previously written about my backup strategy. I've never really worried about backups too much. In the 30 years I've been using computers, I've never lost a hard drive.

...until last weekend. My wife's MacBook Air was displaying some funny behavior, so I ran Disk Utility on it. Disk …

When Bailey Grows Up...

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:57:39 -0400

On the drive home today, my ten-year-old stepson Bailey told me what he is going to have when he grows up:

20-30 billion dollars
A really big house, with a fence and guard dogs
Two Ferraris, and a Corvette
Hundreds of kittens. (He'll have to hire people to take care …

Mac App Guide Review of Menubar Countdown

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:45:27 -0400

The Mac App Guide video podcast has reviewed my Menubar Countdown application. The review includes a demonstration of how to use it.

See MAG 23: Handy Countdown Timer (Freeware) for Mac OS X.

Lunar Lander

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:24:42 -0400

Whenever I'm asked how I got interested in computers, I relate this story:

When I was about ten years old, my father took me to an IBM open house. Dad worked for IBM during its heyday, when it was the biggest computer company in the world and would seemingly control …

iPhone Camp Atlanta 2009

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:22:16 -0400

Yesterday, I attended iPhone Camp Atlanta 2009, a conference for iPhone developers and others interested in iPhone development (business/marketing people). At the same time and in the same venue, Mobile Camp Atlanta 2009 was taking place, targeting developers for Blackberry, Android, Palm Pre, and Windows Mobile.

The conference was …

Adding a Custom View to an NSStatusItem

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:48:30 -0400

My Menubar Countdown application uses an NSStatusItem to display itself in the menu bar. I recently had to add a custom view to that status item, and thought I'd share what I learned about the process here.

A little background: a status item is one of those little thingees you …

Anti-pattern: The Overly Generic Interface

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:43:25 -0400

While learning about Core Animation, I was disappointed to find that it is plagued by the anti-pattern that I call the Overly Generic Interface.

The Overly Generic Interface is an interface that provides a very small set of functions, but each function takes parameters that allow one to do a …

Review: Core Animation for Mac OS X and the iPhone, by Bill Dudney

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:54:17 -0400

Either I’m stupid, or Apple’s developer documentation sucks. Whenever I try to enter a new area of Cocoa development, I am presented with simplistic tutorials and detailed reference information, with little in between to bridge the gap between newbie and expert. Often, the only way to learn an …

iPhone Temperature Warning

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:59:24 -0400

In case you're curious: here's what you'll see if you rescue your iPhone from a hot car:

Appel d'urgence indeed!

How Not to Refactor a Function That Has Too Many Parameters

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:13:31 -0400

Most programmers know that having functions with too many parameters can be confusing. However, fixing such problems requires some intelligence. A programmer once saw some code like this:

SetObjectParams(obj, foo, bar, baz, quux, xyzzy, abra, cadabra, hocus, pocus, presto, shazam);

Finding a stylistic rule somewhere that said a function …

Menubar Countdown 1.2 Released

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:32:26 -0400

Menubar Countdown is a simple countdown timer that displays itself on the right side of the Mac OS X menu bar.

Version 1.2 has these new features:

Supports Growl notifications. The Announcement text specified in the Start dialog will be displayed in the Growl notification window.
New application icon …

New Menubar Countdown Icon

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:02:29 -0400

When I released Menubar Countdown 1.1, I whipped up an application icon by simply taking a screenshot of the menu bar and cropping it. The application icon looked like this:

Fugly, eh? Not only is it ugly, but the narrow shape makes it hard to recognize as an icon …

ESATInformer = FAIL

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:11:54 -0400

One of my clients, whose e-mail system I have to use, uses a product called ESATInformer to filter spam. I don't understand exactly what the benefit of this system is.

When the system receives suspected spam, it keeps that spam message on the server, but it sends me an e-mail …

How to Learn Programming, in Two Easy Steps

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:03:05 -0400

I am sometimes asked by non-programmers how they can get into programming. They want to know what programming language they should learn, which programming tools to use, and so on. These are hard questions to answer. It's like asking "I'd like to be a musician. Which instruments and which pieces …

OmniFocus Review

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:21:46 -0400

I've written before about my Ultimate To-Do List Application for iPhone. I was pretty happy with what I wound up with, but it still wasn't helping me much. Writing down your desired actions is only one part of Getting Things Done (GTD); you also need to organize and process things …

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:44:57 -0400

Twitter Is About Content, Not Contact

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:37:23 -0400

Twitter is getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media. A lot of people are trying it out, but they don't understand what they are supposed to do with it, they don't see any value in it, and they give up quickly.

Many people fall into the trap of …

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:13:36 -0400

This is great: A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

Stack Overflow Moderator Voting Now Open

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:26:16 -0400

If you are a Stack Overflow user, you should be aware that voting is open for a new moderator.

I personally support Paul Tomblin, who is an all-around cool guy, but I don't think any of the candidates would be a wrong choice.

The Undefined Value To-Do List

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:30:46 -0400

I'm happy with how the new Undefined Value site compares with the old Blogger-based site. However, I still have some things to do. I'm a compulsive list-maker, so I'll put my list here.

Update Drupal
Add syntax coloring for code examples
Fix the <pre> style so that scrollbars are present …

The Bottom-Feeders of Software Distribution

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:29:48 -0400

When I released my Menubar Countdown app, I posted it to two places: MacUpdate and Apple Downloads.

It has been interesting to see the number of other Mac software download sites that now have Menubar Countdown available. A few have done something of value: for example, Softpedia created their own …

Enabling FastCGI for PHP on Ubuntu

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:44:35 -0400

I'm setting up a virtual private server. If all goes well, I'll be moving all my websites from their current shared-hosting arrangements to this VPS.

I started with a minimal Ubuntu 8.10 image and installed all the LAMP stuff. Things went smoothly until I decided to try to enable …

Server Fault Private Beta Begins

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:26:54 -0400

Server Fault is a new Q&A website for system administrators and IT professionals, brought to us by the folks who brought us Stack Overflow.

It just started its private beta, which is open to any Stack Overflow user with a reputation score of 100 or higher, or anyone with …

Menubar Countdown Suggestions

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:59:49 -0400

Since releasing Menubar Countdown, my little Mac OS X timer app, I've received some nice feedback and suggestions for improvement. I'm going to list them here, both so that I can find them later, and to let others leave their own suggestions.

Repeat the alarm until the user acknowledges it …

Lumpkin 400 Storage Rocks!

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:55:24 -0400

I want to give a quick plug to Lumpkin 400 Storage in Dahlonega, Georgia. (My recommendation probably doesn't carry much weight, but maybe this will help their Google PageRank by some tiny amount.)

I showed up on Saturday afternoon, asking to rent a U-Haul. Todd Cannon, one of the owners …

Migrating Blog Posts

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:33:29 -0400

I looked around for an easy way to migrate all the content from my old blog to this new one. While some automated solutions for moving from Blogger to Drupal are available, I decided it would be better to do it all by hand. This gives me a chance to …

Fisher Bullet Space Pen: Almost Perfect

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:06:28 -0400

When I was a kid, while visiting the Kennedy Space Center my parents bought me a Fisher Space Pen. At the time, I thought it was cool because it could write upside down, and because it had been designed for astronauts. I don't know where that first pen is now …

Thanks for the Confirmation

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:19:13 -0400

I thought the iPhone App Store's review policy was unnecessarily opaque, but Apple tops it with its Apple Downloads submission process:

This email confirms we have received your submission. Apple reviews all submissions and reserves the right, at its discretion, to omit, edit, or reject submissions for inclusion on the …

Menubar Countdown 1.1 for Mac OS X Released

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:38:43 -0400

I've released an update to my Menubar Countdown application.

See http://capablehands.net/story/menubarcountdown/announce/v1.1 for details.

NutriSystem Review

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:57:33 -0400

I've lost almost twenty pounds after a month-and-a-half on NutriSystem. I'm not a paid shill. I figured I'd post my thoughts about it, in case others are considering it.

There are many, many diets and weight-loss programs out there. I'm not an expert on any of them; I'm just a …

Drupal Rocks

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:51:15 -0400

I first dabbled in web development back in the mid 1990's. Back in those dark times, you created web sites by writing raw HTML, or by writing C or Perl CGI scripts. You spent about 1% of your time creating interesting content and behavior, and 99% of your time dinking …

For Mac Users Who Use Firefox

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:57:07 -0400

If you use Firefox on a Mac, you must change its theme to GrApple Delicious (blue) right now.

That is all.

The New Focus

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:53:45 -0400

I've been thinking a lot about what I want Undefined Value to be. These are the reasons I have this blog:

I enjoy writing and I like to practice.
I want to make contact with other people who care about the things I care about.
I want to be able …

Undefined Value Takes a Flying Leap

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:29:10 -0400

For the last five years, http://kristopherjohnson.blogspot.com/ has been the home of my blog, Undefined Value. Blogspot is a great free platform for bloggers to get their feet wet, but I've decided I want to have a "real blog" on a website I control, so Undefined Value now …

Menubar Countdown 1.0 for Mac OS X Released

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:52:00 -0400

Lately, I've been experimenting with the Pomodoro Technique for time management. The basic idea is that you work in focused 25-minute bursts, with short breaks between bursts. You are supposed to use a kitchen timer to avoid getting distracted by looking at the clock.

Of course, as a computer guy …

All Work and No Play...

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:51:00 -0400

I've been really hating my job for the last twelve months or so. I've wondered why. After all, I'm getting paid well to work on software. This is my dream job, isn't it? Why can't I enjoy it? And if I can't enjoy it, why can't I just be happy …

42

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:40:00 -0500

Christmas Card Picture
Originally uploaded by kristopherjohnson

Another birthday has passed. It has been an eventful year: I got married, and I've become part of a new family.

My wife Pebble is the most amazing person I've ever met. She's smart. She's kind. She's giving. She's forgiving. Most of all …

Saving a View as a Photo in an iPhone App

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:52:00 -0500

For an iPhone app that I'm working on, I want to be able to save the screen image to the Photos album. My first attempt at this was complicated: I created a color space, a bitmap context, a CGImage, and finally a UIImage, copying and pasting most of the code …

iPhone Development Fun

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:09:00 -0500

I am so thankful for the existence of the iPhone. Twenty years ago, if you'd told me I'd be holding a pocket-sized computer that had a high-resolution touchscreen, a wireless always-on connection to the Internet, and a library of Hollywood movies, I wouldn't have believed it. The fact that it …

New 15-inch MacBook Pro

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:48:00 -0500

A few days ago, I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro. For those of you keeping score, that brings the number of Macintoshes in our household to five. We also have two iPhones and several iPods. I wish the local Apple Store had some sort of customer loyalty program.

I bought …

Interacting with Customers

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 05:12:00 -0500

Today I was delighted to discover that Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky discussed my recorded question on Episode 34 of the Stack Overflow podcast. I now think there should be a Stack Overflow badge for people who have appeared on the podcast, either as questioners or as guests.

Here is …

Australian Toilets

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:01:00 -0500

A surprising large number of people have asked me whether the toilets really do flush in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere, due to the Coriolis Effect. Well, the toilets I've seen in Australia don't swirl at all; there is a short but powerful swoosh of water that lasts …

Expatriate

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 07:40:00 -0500

I've never been much of a traveler or a tourist. I don't get the thrill that others do from sightseeing or being away from home. But having said that, I've gotta say I'm a little disappointed with how not-foreign Adelaide, Australia is. I was hoping for a little adventure here …

Flying to Australia

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:03:00 -0500

Flying to Australia from the US is not a pleasant experience. It takes a long time. For me, it was a five-hour flight from Atlanta to San Francisco, then a fourteen-hour flight from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand, then another five-hour flight from Auckland to Adelaide, South Australia. Including …

Stack Overflow

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:21:00 -0400

There is a new web site for software developers to ask questions and get answers: Stack Overflow.

I've been one of the site's beta testers for the past month, and I've been impressed with the quality of the information available on the site. Of course, there are plenty of a-holes …

Troubleshooting the MacBook Air SuperDrive

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:15:00 -0400

My wife has a MacBook Air. One of the things that makes it so light is that it doesn't have an internal SuperDrive (writable DVD/CD). Apple sells a special external SuperDrive designed to specifically work with the MacBook Air.

Unfortunately, we couldn't get the SuperDrive to work. Any disc …

Favorite Podcasts

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:34:00 -0400

If you're like me, you might like the same podcasts I do. Here are my current favorites.

You Look Nice Today: A Journal of Emotional Hygiene: I find this hilarious, although I suspect most people won't get it at all. It's basically just three guys talking, alternating between being absurd …

Night Shift

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:37:00 -0400

The team I'm working with is involved in installing a new system in South Australia. A few people are on site in Adelaide, but most of us are still back here in Georgia, USA.

South Australia is thirteen-and-a-half hours ahead of US Eastern time. This has made it difficult to …

Secrets of Recruiters

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:37:00 -0400

When you are contacted by a recruiter, they will give you a description of the job they want you to take, but they won't tell you the name of the employer. This ensures that they will get their cut for their "assistance" if you eventually get the job.

Luckily, recruiters …

JacksOrBetter for iPhone and iPod Touch

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:49:00 -0400

JacksOrBetter for iPhone
Originally uploaded by kristopherjohnson

Several years back, I created JacksOrBetter for Palm OS. Now, I've created an updated version of that for iPhone and iPod Touch.

It is available for free. Click here to download from the App Store.

Know Your Programming Languages

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:10:00 -0400

I am often amazed at how little some of my colleagues know or care about their craft. Something that constantly frustrates me is that people don't want to learn any more than they need to about the programming languages they use every day. Many programmers seem content to learn some …

First Contact

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:57:00 -0400

Today is the anniversary of the first communication between my wife and myself. How did we celebrate? By playing online games on our two Xbox 360 consoles; one in the family room, and one in the bedroom, shouting taunts at one another.

Some may think it's a little sad that …

Fairness

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:16:00 -0400

This sentence made my day:

As you know, fairness is a concept that was invented so that children and idiots could participate in arguments.

from the Scott Adams blog (the Dilbert guy).

Mouse

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:10:00 -0400

Mouse
Originally uploaded by kristopherjohnson

This is Mouse, the newest member of our family. He's a twelve-week-old Yorkshire Terrier. My wife says I've been beaming with a smile ever since I first held him.

My wife and I have been talking about getting a dog for a while. We were …

The Grand Re-Passwording

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:38:00 -0400

I have a dirty little secret: I have used the same password for my web site accounts for a very long time. Yahoo!, Google, Hotmail, Amazon, all of them — same password, unchanged for years. I've always known this was a bad idea, but I didn't want the trouble of creating …

This American Life

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:14:00 -0400

This American Life has become my favorite podcast. Each week, they choose a theme and have three little stories about that theme. The "stories" are usually interviews or monologues. Occasionally they will do a single long story.

The host's voice annoyed me at first. After a few shows, though, I …

Old Man

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:43:00 -0400

We got an Xbox 360 this weekend. I went to the store to buy Guitar Hero III for it.

I came home with Guitar Hero III for the Playstation 3! We don't have a Playstation 3.

It's true: eventually, we all turn into our parents.

Killbots Want Peace Too

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:17:00 -0400

killbots_want_peace
Originally uploaded by darkpony

The Wedding and Honeymoon

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:27:00 -0400

As indicated in previous posts, I got married on April 5. Although it was obviously one of the most important events in my life, I haven't written much about it, due to lack of free time. So, here's all the stuff I should have written during the past few weeks …

Booleans Shouldn't Be Complicated

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:17:00 -0400

Warning: Geeky programmer content below.

While learning a new codebase, I was a little disturbed when I saw this:

  enum IsVerifying {
    IsVerifyingFalse,
    IsVerifyingTrue
  };

  enum IsVerified {
    IsVerifiedFalse,
    IsVerifiedTrue
  };

  enum IsEnabled {
    IsEnabledFalse,
    IsEnabledTrue
  };

  enum IsActive {
    IsActiveFalse,
    IsActiveTrue
  };

  enum IsOnline {
    IsOnlineFalse,
    IsOnlineTrue
  };

  /* etc. (There are about a dozen more of these.) */

And there …

Pebble and Kris Got Married

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:41:00 -0400

April 5, 2008

It was beautiful, thanks to my lovely wife. Thank you to everyone who helped make this a special day.

She Switched!

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:41:00 -0500

When I first started dating my fiancee, she made fun of my Macs. I told her I'd convince her to buy one herself someday. Her response: NEVER!!!

She kept that stance until she bought an iPhone. Then she started looking more closely at the Mac, saying stuff like "I really …

Shrine of the Mall Ninja

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:54:00 -0500

I was crying with laughter while reading this: http://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/

Proud Teacher

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:48:00 -0500

Today, a development team I've worked with solved an architectural problem by adding a factory method. And they did it without any prompting from me!

They grow up so fast.

Large Fonts

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:55:00 -0500

A few days ago, I finally had to change my Windows machine's settings from "Normal" font size to "Large" font size. Normal-sized text was getting too hard to read.

It's certainly not the first sign of aging I've noticed, but this is the first time I've had to make an …

Good-bye SCons, Hello CMake

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:34:00 -0500

Last year, I wrote of my initial impressions of SCons for controlling software builds. My initial impressions were positive, but even then I was wary of performance issues.

A few months later, I wrote about a performance problem with SCons and MSVC. I was able to hack SCons to make …

Buying an Engagement Ring

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:47:00 -0500

I'm getting married. You may congratulate me.

I asked The Question, and she said yes. I know you're supposed to buy an engagement ring first, and present it as part of the proposal, but I wasn't really prepared when the conversation happened. So, the following day, we went out to …

41

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:10:00 -0500

Another year has gone by. I didn't really set many goals for myself last year, so I'm not disappointed by any failures (although I am disappointed that I didn't set any goals). I lost 20 pounds and ran the Peachtree Road Race, but I've regained the 20 pounds.

The biggest …

Death March

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:31:00 -0500

The term "death march" is commonly used for software projects that are behind schedule, over budget, have no end in sight, and yet must be completed. There is a book with that title.

I've recently become involved in one of these projects. I should say "re-involved," because I was involved …

Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:39:00 -0500

The National Academy of Sciences has issued a report that documents the methods of science and the overwhelming evidence in support of the theory of evolution. It also presents the arguments against the teaching of creationism and Intelligent Design in public-school science classes. However, it also clearly outlines the reasons …

Slower Traffic Keep Right

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:05:00 -0500

Having driven a few thousand miles over the holidays, I decided I'd like to present the following message to all the drivers of America:

If you are driving in the left lane on an interstate or other multi-lane highway, please check the following:

Are there cars right behind you, but …

Two Years Later

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:08:00 -0500

The two-year anniversary of my private pilot checkride went by recently. This has legal significance, as a pilot is not allowed to exercise the privileges of the certificate (license) unless one has had a checkride or a flight review in the past 24 months. So, as of the end of …

Learning Jazz Guitar

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:49:00 -0500

After spending way too much time playing Guitar Hero, it occurred to me that if I had spent the same amount of time practicing with my real guitars, I might be able to play by now.

I have collected a lot of books about rock guitar over the past 20 …

Leopard Impressions

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:25:00 -0400

Unlike the Windows world, where operating systems upgrades are sources of frustration and loathing, among Mac users upgrades are met with enthusiastic interest. I've been using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) for a few days now.

The performance improvements promised by Apple are real. Everything feels snappier. Spotlight is …

Leopard Upgrade

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 06:55:00 -0400

I've upgraded my MacBook from Tiger to Leopard. I hit a couple of snags along the way; maybe this will help someone else avoid the same issues.

1. When I first attempted to upgrade, the Installer wouldn't allow me to select my hard drive for the upgrade. I have been …

Backups

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:32:00 -0400

I've never been good at keeping backups. Back in the good old days, when all my data fit on one floppy disk, I made copies of those, but the first time I had to back up a 20-MB (yes, megabyte) hard drive onto a stack of floppies, I gave up …

.NET Event Logging

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 19:49:00 -0400

(Nobody else will care about this. Move along. Nothing to see here now. Maybe I'll clean this up for public consumption later.)

After spending way too much time figuring out how to change the name of a custom event log my .NET-based service was writing messages to, I decided I …

New Eyeglasses

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:11:00 -0400

New Eyeglasses
Originally uploaded by kristopherjohnson

I've worn contact lenses since I was a teenager. I've never liked eyeglasses: they're too heavy, too fragile, too dusty, and just plain uncomfortable. In contrast, contacts are lightweight, they rarely get dirty, they provide peripheral vision, and you don't have to wear ugly …

Medication

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 06:18:00 -0400

Last week, I had my first complete physical exam in twenty years. I figured that, because I'm 40, I ought to get one. I was wondering what problems they might find.

EKG, heart sounds, lungs, reflexes, and everything were fine. However, my blood pressure was high. It was also high …

Mom vs. MSN

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:16:00 -0400

My Mom likes MSN.com. It's been her homepage for years, and I've accepted the fact that I won't be able to get her to switch to a better portal. However, every time Mom gets a new computer, she somehow gets tricked into signing up for MSN dial-up service for …

Python Server Start, Take 2

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 07:00:00 -0400

A couple of months ago, I posted Python Server Start, a simple template for starting implementation of a network server in Python. I got a comment from "dt" suggesting that what I really wanted to use was the standard Python SocketServer module.

Today, I had to write a "real server …

Screwed E-Mail

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:18:00 -0400

I have my own domain that I've been using for e-mail for the past few years. Most of my e-mail goes there, and then gets forwarded to a Yahoo! mail account, which in turn gets downloaded to my Macbook. This gives me a couple of nice features: I can read …

New HBO Series

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:47:00 -0400

HBO has a couple of new series that I predict will be cancelled at the end of their first season. Maybe if more people watch them, that won't happen, so I want to do my part to bring attention to them.

John from Cincinnati is weird, but has the best …

MacBook Display Problem

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:12:00 -0400

MacBook Display Problem
Originally uploaded by kristopherjohnson

A couple of weeks ago, my Macbook's display started "flickering." It seemed like I was getting some electromagnetic interference, so I didn't worry much at first. But, it got progressively worse, and now the screen is unreadable.

I took it in to the …

Improving SCons Performance for MSVC8

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 05:47:00 -0400

The developers of SCons don't seem to be very interested in this, but I've found a way to dramatically speed up SCons builds for MSVC8 (Visual Studio 2005's C++ compiler).

We've got a fairly big codebase with a few levels. It was taking over a minute to read all the …

Business Opportunities

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:32:00 -0400

Today I was presented with a business opportunity. I know a guy who knows a guy who needs some software written, but knows nothing about software, and I know nothing about how do do what he needs done.

Unfortunately, I am the kind of guy who, when presented with a …

Kristopher Johnson Photography

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:58:00 -0400

I've been made aware of "Kristopher Johnson Photography" (http://www.kristopherjohnsonphotography.com). I'm not that Kristopher Johnson, that's not my web site, and those aren't my pictures. (His are better than mine.)

My pictures are available on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristopherjohnson/

Funny Pictures of Photographers

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:24:00 -0400

These pictures may only be interesting to other photographers. A couple of these pictures are a little risqué, so beware of who might be looking over your shoulder.

http://legko.be/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6053&Itemid=1

Peachtree Road Race 2007

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 17:51:00 -0400

What kind of idiot gets up at 5:00 AM on a national holiday to go run six miles in the heat? I'm that kind of idiot, and today I joined about 55,000 other such idiots in the Peachtree Road Race.

My goal was to run the full course …

40

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 15:54:00 -0500

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an older gentleman at a golf course, and I mentioned my 40th birthday was coming up.

He smiled and asked "It went by quick, didn't it?"

Yes, it did.

De Re Atari

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 22:29:00 -0400

People sometimes ask me where I learned programming. I learned long before going to college. Most of my formative years were spent reading books that are now available at atariarchives.org.

It's a lot of fun looking through those books now. I remember holding the paper versions in my hands …

39

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 11:39:00 -0500

I celebrated my 39th birthday this week, if the term "celebrate" can mean "sit alone at home and watch TV just like every other night." Because my birthday is in January, I do Birthday Resolutions instead of New Year's Resolutions. After all, that gives me a couple more weeks to …

No

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 10:40:00 -0500

Kris, the production system isn't working since we installed the newest release. Can you tell us how to fix it?

Can you send me the log files?

No. They are too big.

Will you let me access the system myself to see what's going wrong?

No. Developers can't touch the …

My First AppleScripts

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 06:07:00 -0500

OK, they aren't really my first AppleScripts. I used AppleScript a lot back in the Mac OS 7 days, but unfortunately most of the applications I used back then didn't support it very well. I was hoping things would be better now, but they really aren't. Apple's applications have reasonable …

Name Taken

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 05:21:00 -0500

It turns out that there is already an alarm clock utility named "Rouser": http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1654716,00.asp.

So the search for a name for my alarm clock has to continue.

Looping a Helicopter

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 23:50:00 -0500

In the movie Blue Thunder, one of the plot devices used to build up the mystique of Roy Scheider's character is his claim to have looped a helicopter, which everyone else says is impossible. For years, I believed looping a helicopter must be impossible (movies are all true, aren't they …

Work, Stress, and Goofing Off

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 05:09:00 -0500

Well, we have our software "finished", and it's a full week ahead of the deadline. I expect smooth sailing for the next week or so, which will finally give me some time to get back into a normal work schedule and to focus on some longer-term goals instead of the …

More of the Same

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 13:41:00 -0500

In Citizen Kane, there is a scene where Kane's newspaper staff is deciding what headline to run on election day after Kane's run for the governorship. Had Kane won, the headline would have been "KANE WINS!". However, he didn't win, so the headline they use is "FRAUD AT POLLS!".

I …

Rouser 1.0 Release

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 04:58:00 -0500

I don't know if anyone is interested, but my simple Rouser alarm clock application is available for download from here: http://kristopherjohnson.net/download/Rouser-1.0.dmg. Source code is included, and it's all free under an MIT-style license.

It mostly works. The Print and Help commands don't work. OS …

My Voting Experience

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 00:57:00 -0500

Happy Voting Day, everyone!

I first went to my local polling place at 10:30 AM. The line was wrapped around the parking lot, it looked like at least a two-hour wait, and rain was likely. I was, in one sense, pleased to see such a huge turnout, but I …

On Writing

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 15:35:00 -0500

I like writing code. I like writing documentation. I like writing specs. I like writing e-mail and letters. I like wikis. I like writing in my blog. I like writing.

What do I like about writing? I like the process of organizing my thoughts and seeing them on paper/screen …

Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 16:21:00 -0500

After using with the single-button mouse for a almost a month, I've switched to the Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer. I've concluded that the single-button mouse is obsolete, and it is just arrogance and stubbornness that cause Apple to stick with it.

I've used the Microsoft mice on Windows machines for …

Virtual PC 7 for Mac

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 19:25:00 -0400

I received Office 2004 Professional for Mac a couple of days ago. I haven't felt like searching around for my Office 98 CDs (which I assume will be needed for installation of this upgrade version), so I haven't tried Office on the Mac yet. I was entertained by the packaging …

Screwed by FileMerge

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 06:48:00 -0400

While adding support for stored preferences to Rouser, I realized I needed to add another outlet to my controller class so that it could restore the setting of the on/off radio buttons. So I went into Interface Builder, added the outlet, and told it to regenerate the class files …

Rouser

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 12:40:00 -0400

My "Rouser" alarm clock application for Mac OS X is coming along nicely. It is basically functional now, allowing me to turn the alarm on and off and set the alarm time. When it is on, it displays a countdown (e.g. "Alarm will ring in 2 hours, 13 minutes …

Living in Squalor

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:41:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, after watching the film Supersize Me!, I stopped eating fast food. I was preparing my own meals, using fresh ingredients. I felt better, lost some excess weight, and had more energy. Unfortunately, with the long hours and stress at work recently, I've returned to the old …

Two Weeks In

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 14:12:00 -0400

10:42  up 8 days, 21:46, 3 users, load averages: 1.56 1.41 1.14

The iMac has been pretty stable, after the first few days of instability. I haven't had many application crashes (only OmniWeb is prone to die) and haven't needed to reboot.

While the iMac …

Little Victories and Little Celebration

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 04:56:00 -0400

We passed a significant milestone today at work: we finally got all the hardware together and loaded the current software on it. And whadya know: the damn thing actually works!

This should have made me feel good, but it really didn't. For one thing, I was tired: it was after …

Application Naming

Kristopher Johnson — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:03:00 -0400

I've read a few chapters of some Cocoa programming books and documentation, so I'm ready to start work on a simple Mac OS X alarm clock application. The first step, which often takes me longer than the actual implementation, is to come up with a cool name for it.

I …

Sprinting to the Finish

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 05:05:00 -0400

I haven't written much in my blog about what I'm doing at work. This is because I've wanted to avoid writing anything that could get me into trouble with my managers, coworkers, or customers. However, I do want to write a little about what's going on at work, because that …

I Bought Microsoft Office for Mac

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:03:00 -0400

I just ordered Microsoft Office Professional for the Mac. I feel a little dirty.

I was hoping that the Mac could be a Microsoft-free haven for me. Then I found that I needed Windows Media Player, so I got that. Then I needed Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection, so I got …

The Brushed Metal Look

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 17:07:00 -0400

I was going to blog about what I think about the mixture of the "brushed metal" look and the more traditional Apple look in Mac OS X, but someone else already wrote everything I wanted to say: http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushedmetal.

The Finder is especially annoying in that …

Sleepless-Night Wiki Moved to Quartus

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 06:00:00 -0400

A few years ago, I created the Sleepless-Night Wiki as a forum where Quartus Forth users could exchange information and code. I considered it to be pretty successful, as it attracted several talented people who contributed code, tips, and advice. It also attracted some people interested in related matters, such …

iMac Memory Upgrade

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 05:39:00 -0400

I added 1 GB of RAM to my iMac, bringing the total up to 1.5 GB. It is much more responsive now. Applications launch faster; the Dock pops out instantly when I put the mouse in the right place; windows resize without all the jerking around; Exposé is smoother …

The One-Button Mouse and Where to Put My Fingers

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 06:42:00 -0400

The Mac still ships with a one-button mouse. This made sense to me back in the System-6-and-earlier days. Other operating systems had confusing and inconsistent uses for their multiple mouse buttons, and Apple's solution seemed to be the simple and elegant one. Apple's one-button mouse was easier to use, and …

Emacs for OS X

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 22:58:00 -0400

One of the first things I wanted for my Mac was a good text editor. TextEdit is okay for simple tasks, and I can use vi in a pinch, but I really wanted something like Emacs.

So I started searching for Emacs/XEmacs for OS X. I found about a …

AirPort Card Freak-Out

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 00:18:00 -0400

Last night, for no apparent reason, I suddenly lost the WiFi connection on the iMac. I was unable to access the Internet or the other machines on my home network. Every attempt to reconnect to the network gave me an error message. My other laptop with WiFi was working fine …

Alarm Clock

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 18:07:00 -0400

One of my favorite desk accessories on the old Mac was the Alarm Clock. Mac OS X doesn't have one. Neither does Windows. I miss it.

I don't know why it disappeared. I guess they figure the appointment-setting features of iCal, Outlook, or Entourage eliminate the need for a simple …

iMac First Impressions

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:26:00 -0400

My iMac arrived a few days ago. I took it out of the box, put batteries into the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, plugged the power cable in, and turned it on. I was pleased to hear the good old Mac startup sound, although it was startlingly loud.

Going through the …

Electronics and PIC Microcontrollers

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:22:00 -0400

Over the past few months, I've been trying to learn more about electronics. My job involves a lot of devices and embedded software, which piqued my interest. As with everything else I do, I want to understand how it all works.

I had a couple of digital electronics courses in …

Milestones Reached

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:58:00 -0400

We've reached our deadline, and spent our entire budget. So I'd like to congratulate everyone on the successful completion of the project.

Unfortunately, we aren't finished. I estimate that we have another 4-6 weeks of work to do, which means we really probably have 8-12 weeks of work to do …

I Bought an iMac

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 01:46:00 -0400

I was an early Macintosh user. I bought my first Mac in college (actually, my parents bought it), around 1987. It was a Mac SE, with 1MB of RAM and a 20 MB hard drive. A few years later, I got a IIsi, and a few years after that, I …

Hobbies

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 05 Sep 2004 22:25:00 -0400

For most of my adult life, I didn't really have any "hobbies". I spent most of my free time watching TV, reading books, hanging out with friends, or improving my programming skills. I didn't consider any of these activities to be hobbies, and always wondered if I was missing out …

Web Site Reconfiguration

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 04 Jul 2004 13:57:00 -0400

My web hosting provider was bought out by another provider. That new provider has now "upgraded" my old account by moving it to their servers. So now all my CGI scripts aren't working, and I can't use FTP or SSH to fix them. Grrr.

Thank you iQuest Hosting.

iPod mini

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 16 May 2004 16:06:00 -0400

I bought an iPod mini yesterday. It felt good to buy an Apple product again, after giving up on the Macintosh a few years back.

I've started exercising (This time I'll stick with it! Really!), and so I wanted a music player to help pass the time and to keep …

New Projects

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 14 May 2004 04:57:00 -0400

I remember, when I was young and foolish, that I was always excited at the beginning of a new project. I saw the opportunity to create something new and perfect. I expected to learn new things with new friends. I was always optimistic.

Now things are much different. When a …

What to Do Differently This Time

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 11 May 2004 01:47:00 -0400

Now that I am going to be a "lead" again, I'm reviewing what I've done wrong in the past. My last stint as a manager was the worst professional experience of my life, and I don't want to repeat it.

One good thing about my new project is that I'm …

Managing Again

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 07 May 2004 03:07:00 -0400

Why do they keep doing this to me? I was just minding my own business, writing buggy software more slowly than expected. But they've made me a manager again. I'm the "lead engineer" on a "highly visible" project. It's a "great opportunity", generating "a lot of excitement" in upper management …

Too Busy

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 04 May 2004 03:05:00 -0400

I hate to neglect my blog, but I've been too busy the past couple of months. According to my timesheets, I've been working over 250 hours/month. This needs to change.

Being deluged with too much work has got me thinking about my desired amount of work. I know that …

I Suck

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 06:06:00 -0500

Well, my project at work is nearing its deadline, which means we are all working 70-80 hours a week without any days off.

This is dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I'm stupid for doing it, and the people I work with are just as stupid. But we're doing it anyway. Why …

Adaptable Developers

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 03:53:00 -0500

The MSDN feed indicates that there are several new walkthroughs available today:

Build a Data-Driven Website Using Visual Basic .NET and Visual Studio .NET 2003
Build a Data-Driven Website Using Visual C# .NET and Visual Studio .NET 2003
Build a Data-Driven Website Using Visual Basic .NET and ASP.NET Web …

Helicopter vs. Lamp: No Winner

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 22:44:00 -0500

I've reached the point where I can "hover out" a battery pack. That is, I can hover the helicopter without crashing until the battery runs out. This is much harder than it might sound. Hovering a micro-helicopter is much like riding a unicycle, with an extra dimension. Keeping the thing …

Installing QNX 4

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 05:38:00 -0500

I installed QNX 4 on a machine today, for some upcoming embedded systems work. This is not the first time I've installed it, but of course I didn't take any notes the last time I did it, so it was almost a new experience.

My first hurdle was figuring out …

My Evil Web Site

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 20:26:00 -0500

Using the Gematriculator, I am shocked to discover that my web site http://kristopherjohnson.net/ is 60% evil.

Luckily, my blog is currently 69% good, and my resumé is only 34% evil, so I may have hope for salvation.

NYC Crosswalk Buttons Don't Do Anything

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 20:25:00 -0500

Years ago, I worked on the New York City Vehicular Traffic Control System (VTCS), the system that controls several thousand computerized traffic signal throughout the five boroughs. Slashdot had an article today about a NY Times article that says few of the crosswalk buttons actually work.

It's not the first …

Branching and Merging

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 16:45:00 -0500

A few months ago, we started developing a new product that was a major extension of an existing product. While we may have been able to keep one codeline that supported both the old product and the new product, many factors led us to decide to branch the codeline. I …

What Can One Person Do?

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 16:43:00 -0500

I'm all in favor of teamwork. I like the sharing of ideas, the leveraging of individuals' skills, and the camraderie that comes from working with other people. However, I notice that a lot of my work habits are focused on insulating myself from others.

It's not that I avoid other …

Considering an MBA Program

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 15:14:00 -0500

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about going for an MBA. A few years ago, I would never have considered such a thing, but now it seems like a solution to several "forces" in my life:

I'd like to go back to school. I think I'd like being in an …

My R/C Helicopter

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 17:39:00 -0500

I've had my Piccolo R/C model helicopter for a couple of weeks now. I've had a total flying time of about 60 seconds. The average flight lasts two or three seconds, and many of them end in a "crash", which I define as "a landing that makes me wait …

Stick with the Defaults

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 05:42:00 -0500

"It crashes in the call to bpGetStatus()."

"Do you have structure-packing set to 1?"

"Uh, no. Let me try that..."

Five minutes later:

"OK, now it crashes the output routine."

"Are you using the standard library?"

"Yes. Why?"

"You need to use the Gee-Cool-Whizzy port of the STL. I'll e-mail …

C++ Testing Frameworks

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:14:00 -0500

I've always rolled my own unit-testing frameworks for C++. I don't like CppUnit, because it is too Java-like and not C++-like. It has always been easier to throw together what I need than to try to figure out someone else's framework. I can throw together the basics in ten …

Reinventing Wheels

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:16:00 -0500

I have a sudden need for a store-and-forward mechanism for a C++ application I'm working on. I'm sure countless others have done this, and there is probably an off-the-shelf solution somewhere I could use, but I have decided to implement one from scratch.

I did spend some time on Google …

Pay Me What I'm Worth

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 18 Jan 2004 18:54:00 -0500

Recently receiving a nice raise got me thinking about the relationship between work and financial compensation.

Some people claim that high salaries encourage hard work. Maybe it does for some people, but it doesn't work that way for me. My work ethic has little to do with how much I …

Software and Hardware

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 03:04:00 -0500

Charles Miller had an amusing blog entry about the hazards of computers. I am currently working with development of embedded systems software, so I spend a lot of my day plugging and unplugging PCI cards, comm ports, etc. My hands are covered with little scratches, cuts, and punctures.

Computer programming …

Helicopters and Simulations

Kristopher Johnson — Sun, 11 Jan 2004 19:55:00 -0500

I've always been fascinated by helicopters. The way they float in the air, and the throbbing "chop-chop-chop" provide a Zen-like experience for me, where I can stop thinking and just experience the helicopter overhead.

Actually learning to fly a helicopter would be nice, but I'm not willing to devote the …

Reading Beginners' Books

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:54:00 -0500

I am reading the Pragmatic Programmers' new "Starter Pack" books. Most of the content is nothing new to me, but I always enjoy reading good books about the basics.

I like seeing things put simply. The real world is rarely simple, and we forget how following a few easy-to-understand principles …

Measuring "Simplest"

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:16:00 -0500

Joseph Pelrine notes that "as Alistair Cockburn rightly states, 'simplest' has no metric. It is not a quantifiable amount." While it is true that one cannot put a number on it, there is an obvious test: you have the simplest solution if nobody can think of anything simpler.

Of course …

Why Bother with .NET?

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:39:00 -0500

Someone asked me "What's the big deal about .NET? Besides the fact that the Microsoft world is steering that way and so knowing it is probably a good career move. Is there a specific problem that it solves that I couldn't solve as easily with, say, Ruby or Perl?"

This …

Confessional

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 03:23:00 -0500

I committed several developer sins today. (Actually, I only committed a couple today; the others were committed in the past but came to light today.)

First, I assumed that the bug was in the other guy's code. I was sure there could be nothing wrong in my simple straightforward object-oriented …

On Being a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer

Kristopher Johnson — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 06:40:00 -0500

I earned the Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for .NET certification last year. My resumé is mired in C++ and CORBA, and I wanted something that would indicate to potential employers that I could do something else. I missed out on the Java bandwagon, and couldn't compete with the junior Java …

Assertiveness

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 18:58:00 -0500

The most significant personal change I've gone through in the past few years is an increase in my assertiveness. I am a very different person from who I used to be, due to this change.

I am a stutterer. That, coupled with natural introversion, caused me to grow up avoiding …

The Making of ...

Kristopher Johnson — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 05:22:00 -0500

When I was a kid, I really liked the "Making of Star Wars" and similar documentaries that gave behind-the-scenes looks at the production of movies. These days, the "Making of ..." pieces are really just ads for the movies, usually being released before the movie itself.

But we have DVD commentary …

Giving The Lord of the Rings Another Chance

Kristopher Johnson — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 05:10:00 -0500

I didn't like The Lord of the Rings when I read it as a teenager. I loved The Hobbit, but Rings just bored me. It had too much singing and story-telling, and was just too long. I lost interest before finishing the first volume, so the other two volumes were …

Self-Reflection

Kristopher Johnson — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 04:54:00 -0500

I spend a lot of time in front of reflective surfaces (computer monitors and my TV), and so I occasionally catch a glimpse of myself when I don't mean to look at myself. Before I realize who I am looking at, my first impression is often that the guy looks …

My Failed Contracting Career

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 03:59:00 -0500

After my last permanent position, I took a few months off from work, and then tried to start a career as an independent consultant/contractor. After many years of hearing about the freedom enjoyed by consultants, and the exhorbitant fees they charged, I wanted to get my piece of the …

New is Good?

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 03:59:00 -0500

Python is the coolest language ever.

I've never written a real Python program. But after reading the language spec and a few tutorials, and writing a few simple programs, I am fascinated with it.

Like many other programmers, I love to play with new things. Learning is fun. New challenges …

Welcome to My Blog

Kristopher Johnson — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 03:59:00 -0500

My name is Kris Johnson. For eleven years, I have been a computer programmer. For the first few years, I enjoyed it. Now, I've grown tired of it, but I don't have any other marketable skills and I don't want to move into management. So, I do what I can …