• More AppleScript

    After my last post I really wanted to explore AppleScript some more. So that’s what I did. One thing I like to do is listen to podcast episodes in chronological order. That is to say episodes from different podcasts. But also one episode at a time. The podcasts I subscribe to average about 50 minutes…

  • AppleScript to the Rescue

    AppleScript to the Rescue

    As a long time user of Google reader, it saddens me to see the service closed. A ton of information will be lost. All the starred articles and feeds no longer available will disappear into the ether. I started looking into alternatives shortly after hearing about the intended closure. One reader I had heard a…

  • A diary on working with third party code

    There comes a time for every developer when they must work with code written by somebody else. Some times it’s voluntary. Say for instance there is a useful library the developer wants to use instead of writing all the code themselves. Other times, it’s not. Like when a new developer joins a project already in progress.…

  • Switching Engines

    When I started work on Crowman & Wolfboy there had already been some development complete on the game. A few levels were already built and saving and loading were being coded. However we soon ran into several problems with development. Documentation seemed really out-of-date with the original engine. Code wasn’t working as the documentation specified…

  • The Importance of Documentation

    In the previous post I describe several forms of documentation and their uses. Hopefully it’s clear that each form is important and serves a distinct purpose. In a typical day, I find myself referencing at least two of these forms. some days I don’t reference any documentation. On days I do, it is most often…

  • The Many Forms of Documentation

    When I tell non-progammers I’m a software engineer most of them ask about coding languages or mention something about HTML. They have this idea that programming is all code all the time. A lot more goes into programming than just code. Before writing any code an engineer needs to know what capabilities are already provided…

  • Why Math?

    Why Math?

    When I was in high school I took a class most students take. It was a trigonometry class. Most of my classmates had a frequent recurring question, “Why do we need to know this?” The teacher wasn’t very helpful with giving an answer. So I took it upon myself to come up with one. Being…

  • Apple Sales Tax

    There has been much talk lately over Apple’s recent changes to its app store guidelines. It seems apps aren’t making much profit from ebook sales. You see, anytime an app on iOS makes an ebook sale, 30% of the sale goes to Apple. When I first heard about the rules I thought they seemed a…

  • Javascript Controlled SVG Part 2

    I have already covered utility functions and GUI code, but most of the code is for calculations of color data. This post will explain how all of the code ties together. When the user first loads the color picker the default state is loaded. All values are zero and correspondingly the color is black. RGB…

  • Javascript Controlled SVG Part 1

    In my last post I described the experience and development of my first true attempt at SVG. This post will describe the javascript code which implements the behavior of that color picker. This is meant to describe the code to somebody who understands basic programming but not necessarily javascript or working with graphics. If you…