Backing up. You do, don’t you?
Amazon dropped off a new backup drive today, so I thought I’d share my backup “strategy”, because you should be backing up, kinda like you should be flossing your teeth. These days, especially if you have a Mac, it’s so easy that there is no excuse for not doing it. TL;DR: FFS, make sure you backup, and test your backups …
Read MoreDid Apple move it’s manufacturing to “the cloud”?
From the New York Times For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said. Sounds like the same reason …
Read MoreStarbucks app: Breaking the rules and making coffee
OK, I’m going to try REALLY hard to not rant against Starbucks “coffee”, because while I will not drink it except in desperation, I know a lot of people will, and I’d rather not judge you based on your caffeine consumption habits. [Note: I worked it out in the end, by looking at Amazon’s app (not the Kindle one). Corrections …
Read MoreHeadphones and open offices
Marco Arment brilliantly puts into words what I think about open plan offices and headphones. (about 20 mins in) I really enjoy being in the headphones, being in the closed off environment, where I can block out noise distractions….. (at tumbler) if I wasn’t wearing headphones, I wasn’t working very hard. I could leave my headphones off and process email …
Read MoreChristmas CSS and CDN fun
Ah yes. Back to the (semi) technical topics. On the site we are working on, we serve everything except the HTML (via Umbraco) from a CDN. Littered throughout the code and references like: <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”<%= CDNHelper.WrapUrl(“/css/base.css”) %>” /> .. but for CSS, JS and any images we have. The WrapUrl call just checks to see if we are …
Read MoreRanting about things I can’t change: the Music function in iOS
First up, I realise this is pointless, but it’s been pissing me off for ages. <rant> [Update: this is now in Apple's bug system as BugID: 10469092] I have fairly large fingers. They are not huge, but they are not dainty lady-hipster-fingers, either. Most things in iOS – actually, everything in iOS except this – works great with my chubby digits. …
Read MoreNearest Bus 1.2.1 and mobileAgent 1.7 are available!
With Leonie away for a week in Mexico, I got a lot of back-dated bugs and little fixes done on both of these apps. Nearest Bus was the first to get an update. [AppStore] If you tap on the bus you are interested in, it will set an alert on your phone for 2 mins before the bus is scheduled …
Read MoreLondon Bike App source code now available
Recently, on the MonoTouch list, there have been a lot of questions around things which, for me, are fairly basic, including UITabController MonoTouch.Dialog and UITableViews Location awareness GC issues I thought a good way to try to help people would be to release a full, working app, which illustrates this. Hence London Bike App. London Bike App is a fully working application, …
Read MoreNearest Bus 1.2 is out, with Favourites
The latest release of Nearest Bus was approved by Apple a few days ago, and is now available in the AppStore. This release includes Favourites, which allows you to mark a stop as a favourite, and if you are within 2km of the stop, it will show up. Favourites are shown on the left side of the closest stop, where …
Read MoreA bit of a rant on Smartphone platforms
So reports have it that the RIM/Blackberry issue which has taken Blackberries worldwide out of service, was down to “unidentified technical debt”. According to software experts at CAST, the reason for the problem is down to ‘unidentified technical debt’. While not the same as financial debt, it is likely to have the same effect on RIM. Now, for a normal person …
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