Xcode sucks. That’s why. Seriously. This evening I thought, “Hmm, maybe for my next project I’ll see about writing an iOS client for my turn based game server.” So I started looking at a Swift tutorial (the language irritates me so far, but that’s just because so far all the syntactic sugar is solving problemsContinue reading “Why I Don’t Write Native Apps”
Category Archives: Practical Applications of Knowledge
Sweet, It Works!
Last post I wrote about wanting to write a text-only Twitter client. So, now I’ve done that. It’s not 100% functional and there are still aspects of JavaFX UI that I’m wrestling with (getting buttons to line up the way I want seems to be way harder than it ought to be), but I reckonContinue reading “Sweet, It Works!”
OAuth, twitter4j, and JavaFX
I’ve started developing a text-only client for Twitter. The impulse came from getting fed up with all the auto-playing promoted tweets that were clogging my timeline. I looked around and found a library to handle all the Twitter API calls and started coding. The example code was all a bit bare-bones, but mostly it wasContinue reading “OAuth, twitter4j, and JavaFX”
Why Crypto?
I know a few people who are concerned about their online privacy, but who don’t have a good handle on what to do about it. There is always some story about some company leaking private data, or some government spying on people, or some “hackers” stealing information for nefarious purposes. So people are worried, butContinue reading “Why Crypto?”
How to Draw a Line
I became a bit intimidated and frustrated with my simulation framework so I set it aside for a while. I played a lot of video games and I practiced my piping. I’m bored with the video games, though, and last night I came back to the sim. I’ve got some ideas for making the problemsContinue reading “How to Draw a Line”
It’s Alive!
So, I’ve been fooling around with Java FX for the past month or so, poking at a toy project just to see how the system works. And now I’ve built a discrete event simulation environment that lets me drop graphical components down onto a workspace and let them pass messages to each other. I’m prettyContinue reading “It’s Alive!”
Followup
From the javadoc comments in Math.java: “If the argument is NaN or an infinity or positive zero or negative zero, then the result is the same as the argument.” Let me just point out that Java thinks that NaN (Not a Number), positive zero, negative zero, or either positive or negative infinity are different values, andContinue reading “Followup”
Order Matters
I’ve been playing Kerbal Space Program recently and using the MechJeb plugin. Some people criticise that plugin – “You can do anything that MechJeb does, and if you spend a little time, you can probably do it better” – and they’re right, for some values of right. And yet, “execute next node,” is blessedly useful. ItContinue reading “Order Matters”
Oh Right, That’s Why I Hated Libraries
I dunno, back in, like, 2010, I was working on software that had something like 1 zillion dependencies (or, you know, 50. Same thing) and keeping track of consistent versions of all the dependencies was a real pain in the neck. Our organization had a dedicated CM team who set up Artifactory and Ivy andContinue reading “Oh Right, That’s Why I Hated Libraries”
Decent Encryption Is Getting Easier
I just found out a thing that makes using PGP with GMail on a Mac easier. The problem: PGP encrypting an email means that, at the time of hitting the “send” button, the computer where the plain text message is stored needs to have your secret key and the public key of the recipient, andContinue reading “Decent Encryption Is Getting Easier”