The phrase “slippery slope” takes on new meaning when watching the oncoming avalanche from the foot of the mountain.
Surely
Sure, God commanded us to obey the laws of the land, but surely he didn’t mean this!
Ultraconservatives
Such statements from ultraconservatives can mean only one thing: God didn’t foresee the current state of affairs, so God misspoke. Surely, then, God is not a god. Or maybe such a statement is deeply, sinfully flawed.
A Swiftlier Undo
After struggling to get NSUndoManager
to work correctly in a Swift-only app under OS X 10.11 El Capitan, I finally figured it out (and it works the same for iOS 9). The meat is in answer I posted to a StackOverflow question. Reposted below for completeness.
Ads
I’ve been watching the recent discussion of (and revelations about) the state of the online ad industry lately. It’s clearly out of control. We know ad revenue is the only source of income for many of the sites that provide the content we love (or at least prefer to waste our time with). Without income, only children or those who have childlike minds would expect these providers to work as indentured public servants just so we can enjoy yet another wildly inaccurate (and poorly edited) listicle. Ads are obnoxious but paywalling everything would certainly stifle the free flow of information that makes the Web the wonderful boon to global civilization it is. So what’s the solution? I have a “modest proposal” (that doesn’t involve eating children).
Continue readingIs It A Disk Image?
A comment on an old StackOverflow answer of mine took me to task for a “partial answer” so I decided to improve it. Both posters wanted to know if a mounted device is a disk image. I wrote a simple routine using the DiskArbitration framework to test this given a file URL.
Continue readingAn NSURL Category For Adding to Favorites Lists
I encountered a question on StackOverflow today about how to add items to the favorites list in the Finder sidebar (which also appears in the standard Open and Save dialogs’ side bars). Though it’s already been answered before (I marked it as a duplicate, pointing to an answer from 2011), it appears the information is a bit outdated and contained no example code. I wrote, tested, and added the code to an updated answer. Not satisfied to stop there, I felt it would be easier to use if I created a simple category on NSURL
so you could tell a valid file URL directly to add itself to either the favorite items or favorite volumes list with one call. It’s compatible back to 10.5.
Gestimer
It’s rare these days that I encounter an app with a user interface that surprises and delights me. I encountered one such app this morning called Gestimer, written by Martin Nguyen ( @imaddin ).
Continue readingHold The Mayo
Heinz (the ketchup people) got in trouble when a QR code on their label directed a man to a hard-core porn site. Apparently the promotional campaign had ended and the associated domain expired. Meh. It would’ve been funnier had the condiment been mayonnaise.
Odd Hors D’Oeuvre
I encountered an article today titled Researchers design placenta-on-a-chip to better understand pregnancy and thought, “What an odd hors d’oeuvre.”
Spam Fun
So I received some spam today and thought, “what the hell,” and responded. Note, the number I gave for my “assistant” is the United States FBI’s main contact number. 😉
Continue reading