Software development. Tech punditry. Retro gaming.
Many of you would be aware that a game titled “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” was released for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It is often (unfairly) claimed that it caused the great video game crash of 1983.
While not a great game, there are far worse games in existence. It was rushed in development and the result …
There are a number of different health identifiers in use throughout Australia, some for patients, some for doctors, some for organisations. Each identifier has its own particular use and rules around its format, with some more complex than others.
Good software will generally check the validity of field inputs where possible. For example, a field for an email address would …
It has been 15 years since my last blog post. I eventually turned the blog off because it had no updates, and everyone tells me no one blogs anymore. Well, I decided it is time to bring back the blog!
So, I’ve deleted most of the old blog items as the quality was lacking (it has been 15 years). But …
I work with a number of younger software engineers, so occasionally I’ll say something that demonstrates a sizeable generation gap. Usually it is because I’ve mentioned the lyrics of a song from the 80s, or some early 80s television show.
The other day I found myself more than a little surprised. I was explaining something to some of the boys, …
In Mac OS X, the terms “ejecting” and “unmounting”, as they relate to removeable media, are considered interchangeable by most end users. Most people will talk about “ejecting” their USB flash drive, even though this doesn’t cause the drive to pop out like a CD or DVD. Apple explain this thus:
…Ejecting a volume may not mean that it
This week at WWDC, Steve Jobs told Mac Developers that they were offering a “sweet” way to develop applications for the iPhone. Yes, he said “sweet”. Multiple times.
Steve also told us this was an “Innovative new way” to develop applications. And that it was “Easy to update – just change the code on your own server”. Ouch! Developers were …
For those who don’t know, OS X has the concept of a “bundle”. A bundle is basically a folder that allows related resources (software code, graphics files, configuration information) to be grouped together. The most common example of bundles is Mac OS X Applications. Mac OS X applications are often bundles, known as “packages”. To the end user, in the …
I’ve been meaning to do a quick review on iWoz for a while now, having read the book back in December last year.
iWoz is the autobiography of Steve “Woz” Wozniak. For those who don’t know who this is, Woz created the Apple I computer, and founded Apple Computer (along with Steve Jobs).
Now, I’m a big fan of Apple …
Mac OS X is quite probably the best operating system in the world when it comes to internationalisation. It comes complete with language settings from all over the world, with the ability to easily switch to another language depending on user preferences. Applications have the ability to easily support languages other than the language the application was written in.
Which …
A lot of Mac users actually don’t realise that there is a “Secure Empty Trash” option for securely deleting the files in their trash.
What does this mean exactly? Well, when you empty your trash the usual way, the contents of the files are still lying around on the disk until they are overwritten by other data. This implies that, …
One of the many great things about OS X is the simple installation process most applications use. To summarise the process – “Simply Drag and Drop to Install”.
OS X has the concept of an application “bundle” (there are other types of bundles too, but I want to just talk about applications for now). An application has many files that …
[This post continues on from Part 1. Please read that post first.]
I’ve just released a new version of Universal Document. This version adds support for URLs, along with better error handling. The source code is available if you want it too (as mentioned in Part 1, the actual code is minimal).
Version 1.1 brings …