It was painful to wait for the first time sync which took about two hours on my device (I have a lot of stuff). It's much faster now.

The keyboard is not as bad as the iPhone (I'm typing this on the iPad) but it is no walk in the park to type on either. I bought the apple case for it that makes it incline and I couldn't imagine being able to type fast without it. However the angle it produced forced me to put a small book underneath to avoid carpal tunnel by bringing it closer to my fingers. Although now you can type long texts (the software keyboard is basically a full-travel size, with wider than normal spacing between keys), it's probably a good idea to pick up an external keyboard if you're going to find yourself typing a whole bunch, particularly due to the complete lack of cursor keys. The keyboard is meant to be used with the iPad on a surface though, it's hard to type while also holding the device.

Netflix is simply awesome on it. Release night had some performance problems but they seemed to have been fixed by this morning (everyone trying it out probably).

So far I have browsed the web with it, played some games, read books using Kindle's app and watched netflix. It works fantastically well (speakers are better than on the iPod but not as good as a notebook, headphones are still required in loud environments).

I did get the only ssh app available directly for the iPad to see if I could do work in a pinch. It works but it's still painful (my brain seems to crave the tactile feedback once I get into a command line). I will try it later with a bluetooth keyboard and if that works I'll be getting one to keep in my bag.

I picked up the iWork suite but not having anything pressing that requires it I have only followed tutorials so far. I can already tell the experience of having to sync files through iTunes is not going to cut it though as I have two computers, work and home. I really need to be able to get to any file in my MobileMe at least. Not having the option to do so is, well, disappointing. I wish I had a real finder, even if it did only client AFP.

I also tried the books app, and was able to easily sync epubs I dragged to my library but oddly no PDFs. Sad because I have a lot of those I want to keep as reference. Luckily my iPhone apps (stanza) all work so I can still use the dropbox/stanza trick, though 2x pixellated stanza won't do for the longer term.

All in all, it's an ambitious device and it does take the place of my Kindle in my bag permanently. I will still use the kindle in super-sunny environments and while relaxing in the backyard over the summer, but there is really no reason for it in other circumstances when given the choice. I still love my amazon eBooks though, so I was happy to see that amazon has smartly added the buy option on the iPad version of their app. As I see it most of the flaws are smaller and in the software, so I'm pretty happy and looking forward to those firmware updates.

It's not fully automated, it still requires your eyes. But it can make a difference when you're writing parsing code and you don't know what to do with some edge cases. Maybe some code like this coupled with a spell checker inside the loop would give you some sense of automation.

• First, install iconv (on a Mac, use sudo port install iconv).
• Next, use curl (sudo port install curl if you don't have it) to get the stream and save it to a file, or copy/paste the section you see looking strange.
• Now write this program and run it:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
CHARSETS=`iconv -l | xargs`.split(' ')
#puts CHARSETS.join(',')
RESULTS={}
CHARSETS.each { |charset|
	#puts "Trying: #{charset}"
	RESULTS[charset] = `cat untitled\\ thefile.txt | iconv --from-code=#{charset} 2>&1`
}
 
RESULTS.each{|charset, result|
	puts "#{charset} - #{result.sub("\n", ' ')}"
}
 

Now look at the results. Sometimes, more than one may match.

This post aims at introducing the DTrace debugging tool in the scope of a javascript application. It won’t get too deep in the wide field of DTrace functions but I hope it will give you an overview of how DTrace can help to solve performance and debugging issues in your javascript applications

[From FuzzyCom :: Using DTrace for javascript debug on OS X in firefox]

I love my Mac, and many of us like the idea of automating our software, until we try to use AppleScript to do it. To say that Applescript is professional developer unfriendly is an understatement. I like ruby but to make ruby and applescript talk requires sending strings to osascript in just the right way and getting the output from osascript back. Not a lot of fun at all.

Enter appscript. Appscript is a ruby library that interfaces with applescript seamlessly.

What's pretty amazing is its power after you spend a little while on the irb console and keep using the tab key for autocompletion. It even introspects the dictionary to see what is available at this time. It doesn't always give the right thing but by trying things out and with a bit of logic you always get there.

There's also an app called ASDictionary that will spit out the dictionary with ruby syntax, though I never found the dictionary all that useful anyway (I mean yes, it has definitions for everything, but it seldom provides info on exactly how everything is tied together or examples of use). I personally prefer trying things out on the console.

Here are a few examples of its use. You can do all this on irb immediately after installing it with sudo gem install appscript:

Driving iCal

This will get all your calendars and print their names:

 
require 'appscript'
app = Appscript.app("iCal")
app.calendars.get.each { |cal| puts cal.name.get }
 

Just expanding on this concept a little more, you can also grab all the to-dos:

 
app.calendars.get.each { |cal|
  cal.get.todos.get.each {|todo|
    puts todo.summary.get
  }
}
 

Automating Safari. Ruby to Applescript to Javascript

Haven't tried marshaling values back as I'm just exploring, but I don't see why it couldn't.

 
require 'appscript'
app = Appscript.app("iCal")
app.open_location("http://www.google.com")
window = app.documents.get[0]
window.do_JavaScript("window.alert('Your title is '+document.title)")
 

I'm sure you can find some use for this. I already did - I wrote myself a quick cron to add all the JIRA tasks assigned to me to Omnifocus if I don't already have them there. I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can put this to use.

When using multiple NIBs, we need a common object that will share data among them. That object will hold bindings, outlets, target/action shared across NIBs.

[From Bindings, Outlets, Target+Action across multiple NIBs ]

Whenever I setup a new Xcode project, the first thing I do is initialize it as a Git repository and add some configuration to the project that will make using Git with Xcode a bit less messy.

[From christopherroach.com ]

And of course debate has already started on the merits of treating certain things as binary to avoid merging nightmares. <sarcasm>Don't you love XML syntaxes?</sarcasm>

What bothered me about this was that all the files scanned always end up named "scan12345.pdf". Because of the way I file, I like having my things as "year/company/year-monty-date.pdf" instead.

For a while there I was spending hours manually moving files to the correct folders while watching TV or doing another "using half-my-brain" activity. I thought there had to be a better way. I'm a bit handy with software, so I started a little ruby script to do the move for me.

The script uses pdftotext (you can get pdftotext using MacPorts ) and ruby to determine information inside the actual PDF (scan them as "searchable PDFs" so it OCRs the text). Once it makes that determination, it does the file move to the appropriate place. A series of Regular expressions inside the script determine what company it belongs to, and a strong date parser takes a look at anything that looks significant enough that has a date attached to it in order to determine an appropriate date IN the scanned document, as opposed to the date of the file (which it uses if it can't find any parsable dates inside the document).

So now I had a script that could do those moves properly, but still didn't want to have to remember to continuously running the script. Here is where the Mac's Folder Actions feature comes in.

Using Folder Actions, I wrote the following script to wait for the file to drop in the folder (the scanning program on the Windows side uses a VMWare shared folder to drop the PDF on a mac folder):

It's not perfect. It uses a delay mechanism to wait for the Windows side to finish writing the PDF (dumb scanning program creates the zero-byte file and waits to fill it until it has run OCR on the whole thing). But because the folder action works on all PDFs on the document, it can pick up the ones it couldn't run pdftotext on the last time, so it's good enough for now. It also has a real problem pulling the correct date on documents where a lot of patterns could be a date (need to work on a good algorithm - I haven't found one yet).

Anyway, here are the auto_file script and the applescript folder actions script that triggers it.

Hopefully it will be useful for you if you have a similar need or just for learning how you can streamline some of the stuff you do every day with your Mac. Cheers!

I have determined that the problem was the lack of an "always there" todo list and note taking device. I write too slowly and am not organized enough to use my moleskine (never mind that I also tend to forget it), and my lifestyle is too mobile to just use a laptop.

I tried iGTD and Omnifocus. Ominfocus was too heavy on the resources, though by now I should probably try it again (maybe when they come up with an iPhone rich client). I also used Circus Ponies' Notebook, which was pretty nice but didn't do spotlight with enough granularity. Then I tried Journler (for journaling, never used it for GTD) and now I'm trying out Evernote. So how does Evernote compare?

Well, it's not as nice as Journler. But it syncs online and does OCR, which is pretty unique. But only kind of works out for me because it's not ubiquitous.

The problem with syncing online is that sometimes you just don't have access to the online component. For example, I have a shopping list. I go to it online using the iPhone. When I enter the supermarket, signal drops and I no longer have access to the stuff I'm shopping for! (this *has* happened to me). As soon as there's an iPhone rich client that syncs locally, I'll be much happier.

Having said that, I also like features. And the last program I tried, Journler, spoiled me with them. To the point that I keep comparing Evernote to Journler, and find Evernote lacking.
Both Evernote and Journler support full Spotlight searching which is nice. But Journler (probably because they only have to worry about the client app) is a lot more polished. For example, in Journler you can add multiple pieces of content on the same entry, and these can be audio, video, and photos (through the iSight). When taking a picture with evernote (the only thing that's supported), it always creates a new entry. I can't seem to drag images from one note to another, though it does suport dragging and dropping multiple images.
A big selling point for Evernote is the text recognition that happens on the server. But it seems like it's only half a feature. For example, it recognizes the text and keeps it hidden, like an OCR'd PDF. It helpfully highlights the found words as it finds them during a search, but it doesn't let me drag and select text inside the image, like an OCR PDF would do in something like Preview. I know there's backing text being stored, and I would like to be able to select it to copy/paste, particularly for things like quickly updating my address book with information I photograph off a business card, or preparing a document based on some text that came in as a graphic.

Journler supports real smart folder searches, categories and tags, which should make it possible to set up a GTD-like system based on what you write. Evernote only has tags, and saved searches, which let you save a textual search and a search that is only limited to a particular set of tags, except that multiple tags work like an AND instead of an OR (and you can't change this), so it makes it less flexible that it could be in practice.

These apps I just can't live without (in no particular order):

• Spanning Sync.- Syncs your Google Calendars and iCal. $25 per year, or one-time $65.
• Ecto.- If you do a lot of bloging, you can use TextMate as I have mentioned before, or you can just use a blogging app. This is a good one. $17.49
• Notebook by Circus Ponies.- A good outliner that also lets you bring in disparate information from the web, link files, etcetera. $49.99
• Adium.- The instant messenger client for OSX that is multiprotocol and open source. Free.
• Coda.- An excellent web development app for PHP types. $79
• Fluid.- A lot of us use a lot of different web applications. This lets you make a site-specific browser that only runs on this application. Free.
• Free Ruler.- A simple screen ruler. Simple, efficient. Free.
• iShowU.- Records anything going on on your screen into a movie. Excellent for showing "why things aren't working".
• OfficeTime .- Tracks your time by project. Useful for accurate time accounting. $47.00
• VLC.- A video player that does it all. Because life is too short to worry about video codecs. Free.
• VMware Fusion.- Virtual Machine. Run any intel OS on your Mac. $79.99
• iWork.- If you don't have giant excel files with Macros and you don't live by the MS Office suite, this is very good. I don't have office on this machine anymore and I don't miss it. $79
• MacPorts.- Requires the OSX development tools installed. If you are a Linux, Unix or BSD switcher, get this to maintain your more unix-y software. SVN, Git, colordiff, languages. Basically the whole ports tree ported over, plus a lot of Mac-specific stuff. Free and Open Source.

Here are others that I have been playing with, which you may find useful or interesting:

• Journler.- Kind of interesting, journaling software. Lets you keep a journal and add video/audio to it. Some todo type features. $34.