Friend looking for image processing to measure stamp quality
A friend approach me the other day to see if I could whip up a small program to help him with his stamp collection. Apparently how well centered a stamp is is very important to its value and while there are some programs that do this measurement on Windows he is unaware of anything for the Mac. He lacks an intel Mac as well which makes the option of emulation harder.
I’ve never done much with image processing myself but promised I’d blog the need and see if anyone out there has anything laying around that could do the job or is interested in the project. I think he is willing to put up a small bounty but nothing huge. If you are interested let me know and I’ll fwd your email to him. Thanks.
Posted on: August 1, 2007 – 12:43 am | Comments (0)
Universal MegaManEffect
Long before there was Billable there was a weekend hack called the MegaManEffect. What is the MegaManEffect?
The MegaManEffect is an application that emulates an effect seen in the classic NES game Mega Man 2. When you launch an OS X application, the screen goes dark, stars sweep the night sky and your application’s icon is presented in a blue letter box bar with a cheesy 8-bit music introduction.
MegaManEffect was written while I attended the ADHOC/MacHack conference in 2004 and took second place in the ADHOC Labs Showcase! In the summer of 2005 the application hit a nerve in the community generating tons of interest and downloads. It is to this day the most distributed code I’ve even written by myself.
Anyways, a while back my personal site imploded and the MegaManEffect download page disappeared. After many, many emails I’m finally putting it back online here and even upgraded it to a Universal Binary so it runs great on Intel Macs.
- Download the MegaManEffect Application
- See MegaManEffect demoed on Attack of the Show
- See the original MegaMan 2 game in action
The source for MegaManEffect is available under a BSD license on the new Clickable Bliss Google Code Project. Checkout via SVN using:
svn checkout http://clickablebliss.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Cocoa/MegaManEffect ~/Desktop/MegaManEffect
The code itself isn’t terribly good (it was written as I was still learning Cocoa) but oh well. :-) Enjoy.
Posted on: June 30, 2007 – 8:35 pm | Comments (8)
Cocoa code branching per release?
How do I branch Cocoa code to use newer classes if available but still work on older OS releases?
I have a 10.4 only Cocoa application. It uses some private API for something and when running that feature in Mac OS X 10.5 the application crashes. The good news is that there is now a public API for this thing. What I’d like to do is use a little if block (something like if (NSClassFromString(@"NSNewCoolClass") == nil)) and continue to use my hack in 10.4 and the new official stuff for 10.5.
What I’m a little unsure of is how I can do this. If I write code with NSNewCoolClass the compiler barfs cause it doesn’t know what it is (I’m still linking against MacOSX10.4u.sdk). My understanding is if I link against the 10.5 sdk it won’t work on 10.4 (which is a must for me). So what should I do?
Posted on: June 29, 2007 – 11:21 pm | Comments (5)
Billable tweets
Not knowing if I’d stick with it (and thus why I never brought it up here), a while ago I started a twitter account just for Billable. To date I’ve posted screenshots and notes as I add new features. If you’re on twitter and want to see how Billable is maturing please add him as your friend.
What is twitter? It’s very much like instant messaging but instead of sending the message to one person you post it in the public space and people who are following you (ie: they marked you as a friend) will see it. Twitter is pretty neat onto itself, but I wouldn’t be using it if it weren’t for Twitterrific, which is a Mac OS X app that lets you receive and send tweets right from the desktop.
Posted on: June 26, 2007 – 3:44 pm | Comments (0)
Feedback on quantity interface in Billable
I’m writing this mainly so I can link to it in the Mac UI mailing list, but feel free to chime in if you have thoughts.
Billable has two types of services, flat fee and time-based. We allow the user to choose the type via a radio button list. When time-based is chosen we enable some fields to enter a time and an hourly rate. When flat fee is chosen the total becomes editable.
I want to add a new quantity type (N of item X at Y price) but to do so I need to remix the UI a bit. I can’t continue to list them as radio buttons with inline fields for fear of it getting too tall. My current iteration is to use tabs like this:
The real question here is if I should use the segmented controller of the tab view to control the type of service or should I replace it with a pulldown control (HIG example). Or maybe I’m totally off and you have a better suggestion.
Not shown are a few other UI moves and the fact that I will grow and shrink the tab area as needed to keep it condensed.
So anyways, if you have any feedback let me know. Thanks!
UPDATE: So after getting some feedback from Daniel and others I worked up some still shots options and as of tonight have implemented it like this:
There are two rate types: time-based and quantity. Time works as before and quantity allows you to give a unit cost and quantity count. To use quantity for a simple flat fee simply leave the count at one. When the count is not one we add a little extra copy to the invoice for that item explaining this is for some count at some price each. A movie showcasing this can be found online.
Overall I like this solution because it keeps the UI simple (only swapping two fields when rate type switches and keeps the labels on the left) though I wonder if users will understand how to use it for flat fee and then there is also an issue if they explicitly want to show something like (1 at $10.00 each) when quantity count is 1 (though they can always edit the template and take out the if logic to make it always show up). Feedback is still welcome.
Posted on: June 25, 2007 – 5:14 pm | Comments (13)
WWDC 2007 Pics and Movies
I didn’t take a ton of photos at WWDC, opting for a beer in my hand instead of a camera most nights. The few I did take have been posted to flickr and here are two panoramic movie shots of:
Enjoy.
Posted on: June 17, 2007 – 3:58 am | Comments (0)
And so it ends.
Home sweet home. WWDC was a blast, but their is some excitement in being home. (Personally I was really craving a nice tall glass of chocolate milk — something I rarely see on the road).
To all those who I got to catch up with and to the many new faces as well (too many to list) it was great to see you. Hope to see many of you at C4 in August as well.
More than ever WWDC is all about the social side of things. Yeah the tech sessions are great, the labs even better, but without all that happening in the context of friends and peers it just wouldn’t be the same.
As to post-WWDC plans, well I really want to focus on Billable 1.2. I have a bunch of features half done and I need to start to solidify that and get a beta out. Then perhaps I can spend some serious time experimenting in 10.5.
Posted on: June 17, 2007 – 12:53 am | Comments (1)
Internet Famous
I was lucky enough to get interviewed by TUAW yesterday and the video is now online. Topics included the WWDC keynote, iPhone web app reaction and of course Billable. Thanks again to TUAW for the opportunity.
PS: WWDC is going great. I’m very excited about the developer tools and new APIs/views in 10.5. Good things will come to Billable in time from those. In the meantime I’m also getting some basic AppleScript working for Billable (a main goal I set for the week). Very happy about this.
Posted on: June 14, 2007 – 4:43 pm | Comments (0)
WWDC Mugshot
I’m slowly getting things ready for WWDC. Plane ticket is booked, hotel arrangements have been made and laundry is being prepared for washing later tonight.
Anyways, I thought it’d be good to post a mugshot (like I did for the NY Tech Talk) to remind people what I look like in case they’d like to say hi as they see me in the hallways. The following is from my trip to Ireland.
Mom isn’t coming to WWDC but my ‘Gull Sanitation’ jacket will be there.
Posted on: June 8, 2007 – 4:37 pm | Comments (0)
Going to WWDC!
I unexpectedly awoke today to find emails and opportunities of WWDC tickets and it looks like I may be going after all. Woohoo!
Thanks to those who are helping me go (not sure if they want to be mentioned publicly). Having missed WWDC last year was a real bummer and missing another would have been a shame. I always had C4 on my list so I’d still be able to catch up with most people, but clearly a lot of things to do at WWDC.
So woohoo! I still need to book my plane, get caught up on client work, and so on but am very excited.
Posted on: June 6, 2007 – 9:24 pm | Comments (6)
