When most developers think of Rake, they think of the Ruby Make command. Well Dave Newman has set up a slick Rake script for creating very useful macros for setting up structures outside of Rails, particularly in Objective-C. One I found particularly interesting is the Rake command for creating sprite sheets.

Automating your iOS projects with rake

Very useful if you have tons of sprites to work with.

I’ve been messing around, building sites in Magento eCommerce. It’s a pretty straightforward and flexible commerce based CMS that is friendly for developers and designers alike.

Installing a local copy of Magento might seem like a trivial task, but there’s some serious lack of documentation in a few key areas. After creating a database and installing the downloadable ‘sample-data’ from Magento’s site, import that data into your database. I’m using a Mac running MAMP to handle php, mySQL and apache for running a local server. Once you have copied the magento folder over to your server root, navigate to the localhost/magento folder. I tried many times to get through this installation wizard. First off, the default installation for the magento CMS is defaulted to ‘localhost:8888/magento‘, which, being localhost, will not accept or process cookies. Instead of localhost, use the standard machine IP address in place of localhost, “http://127.0.0.1:8888/magento“. This will allow cookies in all sessions on your local server.

The next issue deals with cookies also, and took me forever to find out. What you will need to do is navigate to your magento install folder and find:
‘~/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract‘
and open up Varien.php file.

find the following lines:

// session cookie params
$cookieParams = array(
'lifetime' => $cookie->getLifetime(),
'path' => $cookie->getPath(),
'domain' => $cookie->getConfigDomain(),
'secure' => $cookie->isSecure(),
'httponly' => $cookie->getHttponly()
);

and replace with:

// session cookie params
$cookieParams = array(
'lifetime' => $cookie->getLifetime(),
'path' => $cookie->getPath(),
//'domain' => $cookie->getConfigDomain(),
//'secure' => $cookie->isSecure(),
//'httponly' => $cookie->getHttponly()
);

Basically we’re just commenting out the cookie requirements for secure, domain and getHttponly methods. Now your local server will allow you to install Magento and login to the backend system. Remember this is on your local machine, so you’re not going to be concerned with security, it’s just for testing, theme development and/or tinkering.

Record Browser View

Just a peek at what I’m working on.

More significant than today’s iPad hardware bump is the focus on vibrant, clean, realistic, pixel-perfect interfaces with animations to match. Garageband was a complete surprise, visually. Here are a few snippets of the eye candy unveiled by Apple:

In today’s world of 99¢ pick a track, al a carte, playlists, shuffling, iPods and earbuds, it’s nice to know the only true listening experience is still available. Vinyl records.

This is a quick video I made after scoring a boatload of vinyl classics off of eBay. The track was recorded straight off the record player into my computer. I love the anomalies of vinyl; pops, clicks, hissing, and an overall warmer sound.

Frank Chimero is one of my favorite designers. He wanted to write a book about design. He started a pledge on Kickstarter to raise $27k to take a few months off and write the book. Just over 24 hours later, the fund is pledged at $50k and growing. If you have any passion for design at all, I urge you to pledge for this project. At least $40 for the hardcover.

Link to Kickstarter page here.

** UPDATE 2/26/11 **
Frank’s Kickstarter page has reached over $95,000 with 3 days to go.

So there you are, hamming out your code for the next #1 App Store contender. Taking cues from cutting edge apps and developers, you want to implement a certain feature you saw in one of your favorite apps, however you have no idea how they customized that UIKit element… I’ve found myself in that situation a few times and always wondered what tricks those UIKit wizards had up their sleeves.

Enter appcrush.rb. Thanks to the great folks at one of my favorite blogs, idevrecipes.com, you too can be one step closer to figuring out how the masters craft their apps.
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I can’t believe I’m STILL writing 2010 on all my checks! Haha, well we’re just a few hours in to 2011 and I know it’s going to be a good one. Why? 2011 is a prime number, and also the sum of 11 consecutive prime numbers:

157+163+167+173+179+181+191+193+197+199+211 = 2011

Ok, so that is meaningless, but I do have a few goals in mind for 2011. They’re not huge, just a few things that I’m going to accomplish this year. I want to submit several apps to the app store, and maybe one of them I hope to be successful. I want to rent out shop space with my brother so we can have a nice place to work on our auto and cycle projects. It is high time that the white FJ40 saw some lovin’ and became street legal again. Also, I need to take down my Triumph and powder the frame and shine up the cases and change out the gearing so I can properly take her up the Alpine Loop. Not going to happen with the sprockets I’ve got now. I have a few more personal goals that probably don’t need to be broadcast on my blog, but they are really good ones. Here’s to being an overall better person in 2011! Happy 2011 to you all, God bless.

Wishing you and yours the very best for the Holidays.
Have a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Oh, and by the way, this years Christmas Eve turkey was far and away the best ever. Brining was as per usual with the dried herbs, peppercorns and apple juice. Then, instead of the bacon blanket like last year, we put a layer of Prosciutto underneath the skin of the turkey with a garlic and herb butter spread. I removed the turkey at 158° and put it on the BBQ grill for the last 10° of cooking. The skin was deliciously crunchy, the turkey had the most juicy and succulent texture to it. I fell apart in your mouth. The Prosciutto gave it just the right kick to add a full flavor to the meal. Alright, enough talk, look at the pics. Read the rest of this entry »