Wired Up And Fired Up

There was a slight issue with Relaunch 1.3.8 and Leopard, this has been fixed and if you automatic updates set to on you should already have the fix. If you don't, you can download the latest version 1.3.9 which will bring you crashing and banging into the world of Leopard.

CornerWeight and Noodleboard, being widgets will both work in Leopard. And Ninjar, our ever popular spotlight .jar file importer has been tested to work against the Lep.

There's been a couple of posts recently about why software companies support the mac and I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring and try to explain why Wired Up and Fired Up are so mac-centric.

1) Macs are my tool of choice. As well as building Macintosh applications I do a lot of Java development and without a doubt Macs are the best platform for this work. I've occasionally had to work on client sites which give their developers Windows machines and it's really, really painful.
My main gripes with Windows (aside from usability issues) are related to things that any operating system should be able to do out of the box but windows can't, such as - SSH onto a server, find text in files (the dog doesn't work, I have tested it thoroughly, many, many times), cope with spaces in directory names and so on.
I simply can't imagine why anyone, given the choice, wouldn't use OS X which does all of these things and more whilst maintaining a friendly, easy to use attitude.
The only downside to using Macs for a Java dev is that the bleeding edge Java builds aren't always available. For example, Java 6 probably won't be around until Leopard which won't be around until October now. I've personally never found this a problem as I'm yet to find a client who is that up to date either (most banks round here are still thinking about whether Java 5 is a good idea or not). If I did, I'd run up some linux distro or other in VMWare or parallels and compile my code in there.

2) The developer community is, quite simply awesome. The majority of Mac developers have blogs and the majority of them are excellent at imparting information. There are also mailing lists, IRC channels and a veritable cornucopia of information available to help you get started irrespective of your abilities, choice of language or framework. Sometimes there's almost too much information, but fear not because almost all of it is good and I'm yet to come across anyone not willing to point you in the right direction if you ask nicely.

3) The user community is, quite simply awesome as well. As a consultant and I get to speak to a lot of clients and as an independent software developer I get to speak to a lot of customers and I can't think of a bad thing to say about any of them :) I get loads of feedback on all my apps - not all of it is positive but all of it is useful and it all gets fed back into making my current (and future) application portfolio better. I am also constantly amazed at how many contributions I get back from the user community; extra scripts for Relaunch, offers of localization help. It's almost as if everyone cares about making the OS X experience better for each other, which is, like, totally egalitarian and nice. Awww.

4) The development tools are not only free but excellent to boot. I know that XCode has it's foibles, but really they're not that bad. The CHUD tools are, again, invaluable and virtually anything that you cannot get for free from Apple you can get for free (or near as dammit) somewhere else. Compared to the Java IDE's I use (Eclipse/IDEA/NetBeans) I think the Apple Developer tools stack up really well and compared to buying an MSDN Subscription there's no contest - plus you don't have to learn C# (a language so complete it doesn't even have a Set in it's collections API)

5) Oh, right, did I mention the hardware? It's gorgeous (and reasonably reliable). In the bad old days I used to have a Toshiba Tecra running FreeBSD, I thought it was pretty cool at the time, it wasn't. It was horrible. It's still in the loft and occasionally when I go up there I look at it and shudder...
With regards to reliability I find Macs a bit like car engines, you either get a good one or you get a duffer. As a general rule of thumb, if it works when you take it out the box it'll probably be ok for quite a few years. I've still got an old iBook G3 kicking around, I had to replace the disk after about 4 years but it was constantly on and constantly in use (it still is, just for web browsing and other light duties). I quite often buy hardware from the Apple Refurb Store, I'm not sure I'm willing to recommend this approach, but over the years I've never had a problem with anything I've purchased this way - I like to think that it's better somehow, as it's had individual attention.

Those then, are my main reasons for developing for, supporting and using Macintosh computers and so far it's been a good relationship. I'd like to think that it will continue to be so.

Many thanks to Ian Dean who has sent me a cut down version of the NoodleBoard widget.

He writes:

"The Dashboard as an idea is already messy so I have tried to streamline the graphics slightly so it looks like a plain whiteboard.
I am sending you the updated widget incase you find it useful."



A copy of the widget he sent is available here (click to download).

If you've never used NoodleBoard before, you'll probably want to head on over to www.noodleboard.com to find out more and set up an account.

Back at college in, oh I dunno, 1993 or so I was fortunate enough to share a flat with a Macintosh freak. At the time I was using mostly the Sun Sparcs on the University campus for, erm, education and an old Atari-ST for music sequencing.

I mostly used the Mac (a Quadra, I think) for playing SimCity and Maelstrom and general messing about trying to get the speech recognition working because that was way cool. Oh, I think I wrote my final year thesis on it as well. I guess I was a bit 'Ellen Fleiss' about the whole thing and was just glad that it didn't 'like go beep, beep, beep at me' and I didn't have to rewrite it.

One thing it did have that I've been idly keeping an eye out for ever since was a keyboard like this :



I've never really been one for fancy, schmantzy ergonomic devices, preferring instead to numb the pain by typing harder and faster until I can't really feel my hands. After all, have you ever noticed how, in any office environment it's always the guy or girl with all the 'ergo-gizmos' that is just the most annoying whinger? You know the sort of person, they're the ones who are allergic to products with water in them? Not wanting to complain I kept my chin up and headed on into the (carpal) tunnel of oblivion.

Well, now it's 13 years or more since I left university and I've been a professional software developer for almost all of that. I've been quite lucky really with the old aches and pains, but of late I've been hankering after that keyboard again, the one that (to my mind at least) made typing nice. Then recently, I found this... The Key Ovation Gold Touch Apple Compatible Keyboard White USB (snappy name, eh?)



Look, it's almost the same thing! I'm not sure why they propped it up for the photo, you'd have to have some serious problems to want to use it like that, but it's fully adjustable in both bend and splay (if that's what you call it) and is 99.9% the same experience as typing on the old Apple ergonomic keyboard. In some respects it's better too - it has a proper escape key for a start (vi users take note). It is also one of the few ergonomic keyboards on the market that comes with proper Apple keys, like Option and Propeller and it has all the eject, volume and power keys over to the left.

It's lovely to type on as well, with proper clicky, clicky keys and none of the mushy softness that Apple keyboards seem to have acquired of late.

Oh, and the best thing about it? No freakin' number pad to get in the way. I'm sure there's a good reason for putting number pads on keyboards, perhaps they're for people upgrading to computers from calculators or something, but really, when you're my age you really don't need to be made to stretch that extra few inches to reach your mouse...

Today I'm releasing a little doohickey from the Open Source community. I was looking for an up to date version of Shufflepuck Cafe, but failed miserably to find anything.
So, after a bit more hunting around I found TuxPuck for Linux, recompiled it on my PowerBook and bundled it up with the dependencies it needs to get running. It's not really a finished or polished OS X game, by any means, but it's kind of cool and worked well enough to keep me amused for a while.

Download it from the product page.

I hope you enjoy it :)

postscript - It's PPC only for the time being, I didn't have the time to make a Universal Binary out of it. Although I imagine that it is very possible to do. That said, it runs fine in Rosetta.

The counterfeiters have clearly gone to a lot of effort, copying the anodized casing, Apple logo and so on. On closer inspection however, it doesn't look quite right and unfortunately there's no pictures of it running. I'd love to have seen what software they've put in it... Probably some knock off 'Super Lucky Happy Music Player' junk, but it would have been cool to see it.

I'm not really sure who the pirate copy is aimed at, coolness aside, the main reason most people buy iPods is because they're so damn nice to use. You can guess just by the crazy layout of the scroll wheel (compare it to yours...) that this one won't be.

Relaunch adds TextMate support. I know a few people have asked for this and it's nice to be able to do things that people ask for.

So, Relaunch 1.3.5 is an incremental update that adds support for TextMate. Enjoy!

Here in Wired Up And Fired Up's bustling, metropolitan offices we build things - lots of things. Many of them in different technologies (although mostly Java and Cocoa these days).

And I wanted a Continuous Integration server to build the things for me while I did more important stuff like, go to the pub or walk the dog or anything other than build things really. I only wanted the one mind (I don't want to waste time to go fiddling about setting these things up for the hell of it) and it had to be capable of building Java and Cocoa targets as well as potentially anything else I could be bothered to throw at it.

And do you know what? I chose Continuum from the Apache Maven project.

On the face of it it may seem an odd choice but it's one that works extremely well and here are my top three reasons why.

1. Virtually Zero Configuration

Do you know how you configure CruiseControl to build a project? Well, you set up a work area, create some directories in it, check out a project into one of them, create another build script for it, create a config.xml, wade through pages of documentation, edit the config.xml...etc....etc.

Guess how you achieve the same in Continuum? You go to the web interface, click 'Add Project' and type in the Project Name, Subversion Url and your Subversion login and password (if required). Then, as if by magic, the project is all there ready to build.

2. Builds anything

When you add a project you pick a builder from Maven, Ant or Shell Script. If you can build it from the command line, you can build it from Continuum.
Just so you know - the following cut and pasted into a file called build.xml will tell Ant to build an XCode project...

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="ProjectName" default="build" basedir=".">
 <target name="build">
  <exec executable="xCodeBuild" failonerror="true">
   <arg value="-alltargets"/>
  </exec>
 </target>
</project>

That's it. If you have that file in the same directory as your .xcodeproj check it all into Subversion and point Continuum at it, you're away.

Of course, you can create custom targets for different build configurations such as Debug, Test (OCUnit fans, take note) and Release and build them all together or separately.

3. The UI rocks

CruiseControl...



Continuum....



Hmm, pretty conclusive I'd say.

Of course, if you're only building Cocoa projects for OS X then I'd strongly recommend a look at BuildFactory from BleepSoft. However, if you work in a more heterogeneous or distributed environment then I think you'll find that Continuum is a lovely little app which will save you a lot of time and pain rolling your own build tools.

Need help setting up your builds? At Wired Up and Fired Up Ltd. we understand that your developers are often too busy developing to spend time setting up configuration management systems and writing build scripts, that's why we're offering a free project health check. Email us on [email protected] to see how we can help improve the quality, reliability and maintainability of your software.

Announcing the latest version of Relaunch. Now with added extra document app support goodness (Smultron, FlexTime, Merlin and iCalamus) and a few extra user preferences (apparently some people didn't like the launch sound... :p )

In the pipeline:
* More app support (of course)
* Internationalisation (being international, I spell it with an 'S')
* I'm working on a couple of new features, but I'd rather not disclose them yet because a) they might not work and b) secret, innit.

Oh, and to keep Technorati happy here's my Technorati Profile. (Not that there's anything there).

is fun, it's a simple but cool (or cool but simple) social site type thing where you specify what applications you use. It's kind of like Digg, but for apps as opposed to tech news (yes, I know there's more to Digg than tech news but, well, no there isn't.)

The neat thing about this is that you then form a network with people who use the similar applications and it's kind of fun to see what other people have discovered that you haven't.

It's full of Web 2.0 goodness, with tag clouds, AJAX and all that malarkey and Relaunch is on there. So, if you use it go click it :)

I just thought I'd mention that I've been creating the screen casts for Relaunch using an application called iShowU from ShinyWhiteBox.

This is a truly ace little product and at an extremely low price. I've been looking for something like this for a while and I'm very glad to have found it :)

There's more info on their website - http://shinywhitebox.com

Not wanting to rest on my laurels, a new version of Relaunch is out that adds the ability to save multiple snapshots and launch them from the finder.

I've also posted a screen-cast of this so you can see exactly what it's all about.

I'm happy to announce that another updated version of Relaunch is now available.

This version adds to Relaunch the ability for it to remember not only which applications you had open but also which documents you had open in them. Currently it supports 20 commonly used mac apps including Microsoft's Office, Apple's iWork suite, Omni Outliner, Omni Graffle, GarageBand, Subethaedit and VoodoPad.

For more information see the Relaunch product page.

Relaunch is a small utility I've been hacking away on for a little while now and have decided to release to the world at large. It was borne out of my frustration with Software Update (and certain other installs) increasingly requiring me to restart the machine Windows style.

Relaunch runs as a Menu Item in OSX and on request takes a list of currently running applications which it then restarts when you next login or restart the machine. For those of you who never reboot you can also launch the applications manually. You get five free goes (or reboots, if you like) before it asks you to register (which only costs $5). It's a simple little app and I hope you like it.

Relaunch Product Page

For those who’ve not heard of it CocoaDevHouse is described as ‘the local hackathon for fellow Cocoa devs and OS X enthusiasts, it’s being pioneered by Blake Burris from Cocoa Radio (a periodical pod-cast focussing on Cocoa development topics).
 
I saw recently there was an event in Amsterdam and wondered if there was anything planned for here in the UK. When I saw that there wasn’t I decided to see if I could start the ball rolling.  
 
To get things going I’m just trying to gauge interest (to date there have been two interested parties sign up) then hopefully organise somewhere for us all to meet up on a regular-ish basis and swap ideas, help each other out have a few beers and a chat and so on.  
 
Eventually, if there’s enough take-up then organising a hackathon or similar event is definitely on the cards.  
 
So, don’t be shy.  I’m not a Cocoa expert by any means, I’m really a Java developer who’s learning Cocoa as a way to broaden my experience and also, well, it is cool.   Anyone who’s prepared to turn up will be made more than welcome and anyone who wants to help out in anyway doubly so.
 
I’ll be trying to get the word out over the next few weeks, so stay tuned...