code meets music - Home

Learning Cocoa

2008-02-09T18:38:00Z

Putting things into an NSPopupButton

it’s easier to use an array of objects with a string property than it is to just use an array of strings. e.g. create a ‘Thing’ class that has a ‘name’ property of type NSString, and put some of them in an NS(Mutable)Array
you can initialise this array in the awakeFromNib method in your controller
you want to drag an Object from the palette into your MainMenu.nib amd set the Class (in the Identity tab – the ‘i’) to be that of your controller
then drag an Object Controller into the nib, and control+drag it to your controller (the object you just renamed), selecting the ‘content’ outlet where prompted. Rename this to ControllerAlias (or at least subsitute this where ‘ControllerAlias’ is used below…)
then, you want an Array Controller as well that will represent the array that’s been initialised in the controller. I named this after the array in my controller
In the ‘Bindings’ tab (green shapes), expand the ‘Content Array’ section, tick the box and select ‘ControllerAlias’ from the menu. The Controller Key wants to be ‘selection’ and the Model Key Path should be the same as the property of your controller that contains the array of items.
Your controller should have an IBOutlet for the NSPopupButton you’ve created in the window, so control+drag the NSPopupButton to the Object you created for the controller, and select the outlet when prompted – it will only show you a list of NSPopupButtons (or subclasses).
Next, select the NSPopupButton in the window (click on it just once, more clicks will select the ‘Cell’ instead, which we don’t want) and then flip to the Bindings tab in the inspector.
For ‘Content’, tick the box and choose/type the name of the ArrayController you created. The Controller Key wants to be ‘arrangedObjects’, the other two boxes should be empty.
‘Content Values’ wants to also be bound to the ArrayController, and again the Controller Key should be ‘arrangedObjects’, but this time the Model Key Path wants to be ‘name’ – or the name you gave to the property on your ‘Thing’s. Finally, the Selected Index also wants to be bound to the ArrayController, with Controller Key set to ‘selectionIndex’
to get at the value from the controller, setup an IBAction (from a button click or similar) and then you can get at the string value using [popupbuttonField titleOfSelectedItem]. More useful would be to access the object that you used to bind in the first place, but I can’t seem to get that to work.

Making HTTP POST requests

Coming from PHP, this seems like it’s really complicated, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I was missing something…

To make a request, you need one each of NSURL, NSURLRequest and NSURLConnection. Using NSMutableURLRequest makes the code a bit neater (as you can set properties after initialisation), not sure why you wouldn’t want to use it always? (memory? does ‘mutating’ involve copies?)
the NSURL is quite basic, just a wrapper around a string:

[url initWithString:@"http://www.example.com"]

NSURLRequest has initWithURL that takes an NSURL

To make it a POST request:

setHTTPMethod:@"POST"

the body of the request can’t just be a string (so far as I understand it…), it has to be an instance of NSData:

NSString* postBody = @"foo=bar&baz=bax";
NSMutableData* requestData = [NSMutableData data];
[requestData appendData:[postBody dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
[request setHTTPBody:requestData]; //request is a NSMutableURLRequest

NSURLConnection has initWithRequest, but uses ‘delegate’ to handle what happens with the response. Using delegate:self and defining the prescribed methods on the class you’re calling from is probably the simplest way, but seems to mix concerns a bit too much?
You need to implement didReceiveResponse, didReceiveData, didFailWithError and didFinishLoading. The Apple Docs do a pretty good job of explaining this.
One thing I did differently though, was change the signature of didReceiveResponse to specify NSHTTPURLResponse (instead of just NSURLResponse) as the parameter-type, as then code-completion gives you the ‘statusCode’ property (200=success, 404=not found etc.).
The NSHTTPURLResponse class also has a static ‘localizedStringForStatusCode’ method that converts the numbered codes into (presumably localised) strings.
This will let you know what’s happening, but any action that uses the returned data should be in didFinishLoading

Bear in mind this is the way I’ve discovered to do things. If there are better ways I’d like to know about them!

London PHP Conference 2008

2008-01-09T13:44:00Z

It seems registration is now open, and the talks and speakers posted look like it’ll be quite good. In particular, a couple of talks on sending and handling of email look interesting and relevant, while IBM’s Project Zero sounds like it might be worth at least knowing about.

Last year had just the one track whereas this year will have two leaving me with decisions to make, we’ll see how that goes.

Somebody really needs to make the process of booking train tickets easier, it shouldn’t take as long as it did just now for me.

http://phpconference.co.uk

Amazon's Kindle

2007-11-19T23:14:00Z

In a couple of days time (November 21) Amazon are launching their ‘Kindle’ e-book service in the US and it looks like it might be worth a look- if not straight away, certainly in the not too distant future.

The Kindle itself is touted as a ‘Wireless Reading Device’ but it is the service that comes with it that will be just as, if not more, important.

The device will allow you to download entire books, with free sample chapters available for most, from the service’s 88000 title collection “whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.” The product description states that it has “EVDO”, a wireless technology used by mobile phones thus not requiring wi-fi for connectivity. If a UK version is 3G-capable, that would be a good selling point.

This continuous connectivity will also allow Amazon to offer subscriptions, both to traditional newspapers and magazines (unsurprisingly only US publications mentioned so far) and to a variety of blogs, charging $0.99 for a month’s access.

This, at first, seemed to me like a nice idea but looking at the list, it seems to consist mainly of localised versions of “Metroblogging” and “SportsBlogs” that have little appeal. In addition, one of the big trends at the moment is towards offline-access to web sites and applications. Google, with the help of their Gears project, have given people the option to enable offline-access to their (free) Reader service. The device also apparently comes with an ‘experimental’ web-browser that is free to use, so unless services like Google reader are blocked, I’m not quite sure why anyone would be willing to pay for the RSS.

Joel Johnson at Boing Boing Gadgets has posted 15 Things he Just Learned About the Amazon Kindle some good, some not so good.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about the reading-ease of some of the newer ‘E-ink’ devices and wouldn’t mind trying one out at some point but until there’s a convenient way of getting hold of things to put on it (magazines and newspapers as well as books) the cost of the devices themselves is prohibitive.

Searching amazon.co.uk for “Kindle” only brings up other e-book readers, which suggests we might not be seeing it over here any time soon, which is a shame as I think the market needs somebody like Amazon to help it take its first steps.

how to make people buy books

2007-11-19T22:41:00Z

Release them in paperback at the same time (or instead of) hardback.

Currently, publishers initially release books only in hardback and the paperback edition will follow, sometimes up to a year later. Any publicity that the book might attract will happen at the initial release; newspapers dedicate pages and pages to reviewing new hardbacks while around a dozen new paperbacks (fiction and non-fiction) will share a single page.

I mostly buy paperback books, not only because they’re cheaper but because they take up less space and I find them easier to read. I’m not short of things that I’d like to read, so having access to a book sooner isn’t really something I’d pay extra for. It is a little annoying though, that when I’m looking for new things to read, it’s very difficult to find things that are new to paperback- I often end up adding interesting-looking hardbacks to my Amazon wishlist thinking I’ll check back later, but normally forget.

Well, it turns out I’m not alone; the publisher Picador have decided that from next year it will launch “almost every novel as a £7.99 paperback”.

The Guardian had the following to say on the matter:

Since 2001, booksellers have doubled the discounts offered on hardback novels and some have sold fewer than 100 copies. Even Graham Swift, the Booker prize-winning author of Last Orders, has sold fewer than 4,000 copies of Tomorrow, his latest novel, since its debut in April. From spring, Picador will use paperbacks to launch new books from all of its literary fiction writers, unless they have a guaranteed profitable hardback market. It estimates that 80% of its literary fiction will be published in this way.

It’s interesting that I’ll happily pay more for special editions of albums and those that come in interesting boxes, but prefer paperback books.

EEEPC - first impressions

2007-11-13T17:22:00Z

I’m not normally one to buy things on impulse, but the EEEPC from Asus just seemed such a nice product that I went and ordered one yesterday evening and, after it arrived (too) early this morning, I’ve spent most of the day playing with it. If you’re not aware, the EEEPC is small. I mean really small. It has a 7” screen and sits in a 9” (or thereabouts) case and weighs about 1kg. This, naturally, doesn’t come without some sacrifice; the processor is only a 900MHz Celeron; there’s only 4GB of storage; and there’s only 512MB RAM. Despite that, I find it to be responsive enough for the basic tasks I’m planning on using it for, web-browsing and occasional typing.

The device comes with Linux pre-installed; it’s a Xandros-based system that Asus have put some work into to make the most of the hardware. They’ve also wrapped it with ‘AsusLauncher’ which makes it really simple for people not used to Linux to get started, it gives you 5 tabs across the top for the different categories of application (‘Web’, ‘Work’, ‘Games’, ‘Learn’ and ‘Settings’) and then a short list of the applications within each category once selected- there is no application-branding, everything is named for it’s task (so ‘Internet’ rather than Firefox, ‘Mail’ rather than Thunderbird etc.).

It is a nice interface, but I decided shortly after hitting the ‘buy’ button that I’d be putting some form of Ubuntu on it. In the end I went for the XFCE-based Xubuntu, as it takes up less of the precious hard-drive space, and bar a couple of hiccups, installation was straight-forward. I followed these instrucions but with these ‘hiccups’, listed here mostly in the hope it helps others who might be searching:

when trying to make the bootable USB device on my main machine, I followed instructions that told me to run ‘syslinux /dev/sdX1’ (where X is ‘a’ or ‘b’). I got the error ‘sh: mcopy: not found’. It seems there was a problem, in Feisty at least, with syslinux not listing ‘mtools’ as a dependency, despite it clearly depending on it. A quick “sudo apt-get install mtools” later and things were working.
if, when trying to boot from a USB key, you get the error “missing operating system” after selecting the device, then it’s a problem with the key, not with the system. I fixed it by running ‘testdisk’ (package-name as well as app-name) and following the steps for ‘analyse’.
once (X)ubuntu was installed, trying to boot resulted in an error due to it looking in the wrong place. To fix it in the first instance, hit ‘e’ (for ‘edit’) repeatedly on the GRUB menu pages until the command appears on a command-line, where you can edit it. change the ‘root (hd1,0)’ to be ‘root (hd0,0)’, then press ‘enter’ and then ‘b’ (for ‘boot’). This should make things work, but the change won’t persist for the next time you boot. To make it do so, you want to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and change the line ”#groot=(hd1,0)” to be ”#groot=(hd0,0)”. You then need to run “sudo update-grub” to have this change take effect- debian-based systems use an ‘automagic’ system that uses the commented bits in the menu.lst file to build the actual grub config.
initially, the EEEPC didn’t recognise the wireless interface, but following the instructions here made it work.

The small screen is taking a bit of getting used to, putting Firefox into full-screen is helping a lot, but the keyboard will be more noticeable. I don’t see the lack of hard-disk space as being that much of a problem, as with either USB drives or SD cards, it can be increased quite significantly without costing too much.

halloween stories

2007-10-31T21:10:00Z

For a few miles, hers was the only car on the road. Then she noticed a pair of headlights in her rearview mirror. As she continued driving, she noticed the headlights were getting closer and closer, until the other car was almost touching her bumper. The other car began honking and flashing its brights. Scared, Doris sped up. The other car did so too, then changed lanes and started to pass her, but then suddenly braked and swerved behind her bumper, where the driver began honking again.

It’s an old story. Older, even, than email. Seven writers put their own twist on things, in The Morning News’ “open ended gore fest” The Backseat Killer

how to make people buy albums

2007-10-29T19:56:00Z

Put them in shiny boxes. And by shiny, I don’t mean metallic or reflective, just something that is going to make people go ‘ooh’ and talk about. Exactly as I’m doing now, with an album sleeve that you can make into a little Dolls House. The artist is Vonnegut Dollhouse, and they don’t sound half bad. The album doesn’t seem to be available yet, the group’s MySpace Page suggests CD Baby will be selling it ‘soon’.

I found the pictures via The Serif , they seem to have got them from Rethink Communications but that doesn’t seem to let me link directly to it…

The most distinctive album on my CD shelves is probably The Lost Riots by Hope of the States. As an album it was good, but the packaging was something else. The album comes in a sealed black cardboard sleeve, the same width as a standard CD case, but about twice as long. It was a shame to open it, and I imagine many didn’t, but once the perforated flap was ripped open, there is a smaller, CD-sized wallet containing the CD itself, and a chunky cardboard booklet, held together by a piece of string through the top-left corner containing the song lyrics, superimposed on annotated colour sketches of the internals of the human body.

What’s the most interesting album in your collection?

zombi

2007-10-28T21:53:00Z

zom·bi [zom-bee]
–noun 1. Bambi-like deer. With fangs. Weeping gore. And smiling.

Layer Tennis Week 5

best. invention. ever.

2007-10-28T21:26:00Z

How much do you hate soggy cereal? Do you hate it enough to spend less than £5 on never having to experience it again?

Look no further: Eat Me Crunchy will solve all your problems with the rather simple yet ingenious idea of putting a shelf in your bowl that keeps the milk tucked away underneath most of the cereal, letting just enough mix at the edge- the pictures on the site explain it better than I can.

I actually lied about it costing less than a fiver, because you’re going to want to buy more than one. In my case, it seemed silly to buy just one when that would mean having the luxurious crunch at home and not at work (or vice versa) so I had to get 2. Having to watch other people eat cereal from normal bowls is becoming very difficult, if I’m not careful I’m going to end up ordering them for everyone I know. The nice people at Gray Matter seemed to anticipate this situation though, and offer 2 bowls for the rather bargainous price of £7.50, and that includes delivery.

I was just taking a look at the Eat Me Crunchy page on the Gray Matter main site and apparently 30% of people don’t prefer crunchy cereal. I know in this day and age we’re supposed to be tolerant, but really…

autumn albums

2007-10-24T21:46:00Z

White Chalk did arrive, and I was a tiny bit disappointed. It’s a nice album, a little haunting but quite relaxing but lacks the power of PJ Harvey’s earlier stuff.

After seeing Go! Team live (again), I got their second album Proof of Youth and it’s pretty good. Not as surprising as the first, and I still think they’re best live (a lot seem to disagree) but it carries on the sample-driven, brass-powered, catchy tradition of Thunder Lightening Strike.

Supporting Go! Team were Operator Please, who are pretty darn good. “Just a song about Ping Pong” has been getting a bit of radio-play, and there’s meant to be an album in November, so I’m looking forward to that.

The Klaxons and New Young Pony Club are both described along the lines “the epitomy of so-called new-rave, though they’d be the first to deny it” and while the former jumped out at me right away as being a band worth listening to, I remember looking up NYPC and not being particularly impressed. When they were nominated for this year’s Mercury prize, I decided to reconsider and their album joined the many others that sit in my amazon basket waiting for me to feel like some new music. Their turn came a couple of weeks ago (My Machine wasn’t enough on its own to get me free shipping!) and I’m quite pleased I got it. “Hiding on the Staircase” and “Jerk Me” are really good, the rest of the album is quirky and catchy enough to be a good listen.

layer tennis

2007-10-19T20:22:00Z

The rather interesting folks at Coudal (a design firm in Chicago) run a competition each Friday in which 2 designers go head to head, volleying an image backwards and forwards making their mark on it in an attempt to be crowned Layer Tennis Champion.

Today is the 4th week of the competion and sees Chris Glass go up against Naz Hamid in what seems to be a very photo-centric competition (c.f. last week’s which saw cartoon-style wigwams (or were they teepees?) locking horns with some rather colourful mountains), beginning what a rather abrupt golden toilet. Head here to get in on the action- make sure to read the commentary as well as look at the pretty pictures, it’s rather good.

It’s a shame the matches don’t take place a bit earlier, looks like it’s going to go on well past my bedtime.

My Machine

2007-10-17T19:11:00Z

I think I’ve written here before about how awesome the Rough Trade Shops ‘Counter Culture’ albums are. At the beginning of each year since 2003 they’ve released a double-CD compilation containing what the staff consider to be the best of the previous year’s music. Counter Culture 2005 contained on it a song called ‘My Machine’ by the artist Princess Superstar. I liked it a lot and as a result found a few other songs from the album, which were also pretty cool. I finally got around to buying the album, and it’s really, really good. A definite mixture of dance, electronica, indie/rock and hip-hop, it’s an album that should appeal to a lot of people.

The 25 tracks tell the story of a future world where there is only one celebrity- Superstar, her having taken over the world with a number of clones, or ‘duplicants’- where children are taught to speak (they ordinarily telepath), through the medium of rap. It’s probably the most amusing album I’ve listened to (“Quitting Smoking Song” is hilarious) but also really easy to listen to; the songs are so different from one another, but all are fast-paced and catchy.

My Machine is the highlight of the album, but I’m so Out of Control, 10000 Hits and Sex, Drugs & Drugs are well worth listening to.

Zend Studio Neon

2007-10-13T21:30:00Z

Zend sent me an email this week letting me know that there was a Beta Release of the new Zend Studio product available, to try for free. I’d tried previous versions of Zend Studio and found them to be unintuitive, unresponsive and generally clunky so I was interested to see how much of an improvement the new version would be, given that rather than being solely a Zend-made product, it’s built on top of Eclipse, more specifically on top of the free PDT project that I’ve been using as my main IDE for a while now.

It definitely is an improvement, but I’m not convinced that there is enough that PDT doesn’t have that will make it worth paying for:

The code formatting options are more powerful, there’s a setting for practically every aspect of the language.
The ‘new Class’ wizard is quite nice, letting you specify the class-name, a superclass and any interfaces and having these, as well as any prescribed methods, filled in for you in the resulting file.
The variable-renaming feature works, to some degree. In PDT there’s a menu option, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. With Neon, this will find all uses of the name within the current function or class, but it doesn’t make changes in other files- I realise it wouldn’t be possible to find them all, but it’s a shame it doesn’t even seem to try.

There doesn’t seem to be any mention of how much they plan to charge, only that current subscribers to Zend Studio will get the upgrade for free and that it should be released early next year. You can download it here but you do need to register.

In Rainbows

2007-10-13T17:56:00Z

The email with download instructions arrived on Wednesday just like they said it would, and I’m quite pleased with the result- it’s a pretty good album.

Definitely a departure from Hail To The Thief (my least favourite Radiohead album) and heading back towards Kid A (my 2nd favourite).

There really is no excuse not to give it a listen, as if you really, really want it to be, it can be got (legally!) for free.

Only 6 weeks or so until the box arrives :)

radio 4 comedy

2007-10-03T18:51:00Z

What do Guinea Pigs test on? This and more answered by the very funny Milton Jones as he continues to “bestride the globe as an expert in his field, with no ability whatsoever”. Lots of very bad (but good, if you know what I mean) puns, generally quite clever.

Like Have I Got News For You (back when it was funny, with a bit more intelligence, and without the visuals), The News Quiz has just started up again. Sandi Toksvig (her off Call My Bluff) asks the questions with Alan Coren (him off Call My Bluff) and other special guests doing the answering. Bob Holness (the other “him off Call My Bluff”) is yet to make an appearance.

Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency (this one has a real website!) started tonight. I haven’t listened yet, but have been looking forward to it for a while. For those who don’t know, it’s based on a book by Douglas Adams (he wrote The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy), which describes itself as a “detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time-travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic” and it’s about as confusing as such a description would suggest.