Damage Studios blogs

Skyfire

fusion94 — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:26:13 +0000

Just a little update to let people know that for the past three months I've been working as Director of Engineering - Web Services over at Skyfire

What is Skyfire? Skyfire is a free downloadable mobile browser that delivers both the speed and media-rich experience similar to the PC browser.

Currently the only platforms we support are Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 3rd Edition. And yes we know that it doesn't work on VGA phones but we're working on that.

Anyways, If you want to give it a try go register and download. Also to Note: We only support the US and Canada at the moment.

Save the Date

fusion94 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:30:12 +0000

How to Change MyCompanyName in Xcode ... Permanently

fusion94 — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:58:25 +0000

If you're tired of seeing __MyCompanyName__ automatically in all copyright notices of all your XCode source files then here's a quick and easy fix. You can set the XCode default company name for copyright notice as follows:

Go to /Applications/Utilities and open Terminal.app and enter the following code:

defaults write com.apple.Xcode PBXCustomTemplateMacroDefinitions '{"ORGANIZATIONNAME"="SomeOther Co.";}'

Make sure you replace SomeOtherCo. with whatever name you want. I used:

defaults write com.apple.Xcode PBXCustomTemplateMacroDefinitions '{"ORGANIZATIONNAME"="damagestudios.net";}'

Um....Okay

fusion94 — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:51:48 +0000

Disable Space Switching - 10.5.2

fusion94 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:44:21 +0000

The 10.5.2 version of OS X has a new preferences command for Spaces although tt's hidden and not available through the System Preferences.

What it does is allow one to Command-Tab to the app you want and create a new window in the current space. No more switching to the space that the app was originally launched in.

Here's the terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO

Then just restart the dock using:

killall Dock

If you need to back out your changes just change the first command from NO to a YES then restart the Dock once more.

Love Your Enemies

fusion94 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:04:07 +0000

I saw this on a bumper sticker last night and considering the events around me at the moment it's appropriate.

"When Jesus said Love Your Enemies He probably meant Don't Kill Your Neighbors"

Testing Flock

fusion94 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:42:38 +0000

This is a test blog post composed using the blog tool in Flock 1.1

Nothing really to see here...move along.

UAV's

fusion94 — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:32:13 +0000

UAV's or unmanned aerial vehicle, sometimes called an unmanned air-reconnaissance vehicle, is an unpiloted aircraft. UAVs can be remote controlled or fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans or more complex dynamic automation systems.

Wired Science has a video about them which I've embedded below. About 1/2 through the video Wired talks to Adam Williams about his helicopoter UAV. It was surprise to see it as Adam worked at VA Software back in the day doing linear video editing software.

Comcast and the Airport Extreme Base Station

fusion94 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:01:22 +0000

Awhile back I picked up an Airport Extreme Base Station to replace a Linksys Wireless Access Point. Unfortunately I was brain-dead while getting everything setup and couldn't get it to talk to the Comcast Cable Modem so I ended up putting it behind the Linksys WAP and turning off the Wireless on the Linksys device.

Tonight I fixed the issue. Turns out I needed to turn off the Cable Modem (as well as remove the built-in battery backup) for a few minutes while keeping the AEBS turned off. This allowed for the Comcast Modem to clear both the MAC address of the Linksys and the IP addresses. Next I turned on the Cable modem, waited till it had a good connection then turned on the AEBS. The AEBS was then able to pick up a valid IP address and everything was good to go.

You got to be sh*tting me....

fusion94 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:29:13 +0000

Do I really need to say anything ?

Drupal 6 Released

fusion94 — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:31:28 +0000

I know that I hadn't blogged about the Drupal 6 RC4 version due to work related issues but who cares.

Drupal 6 is now an offical release. What did it take? Over a year of development and over 1600 issues resolved. You can read more about the release here.

I've got a version of this site running an earlier release candidate so migrating over will be coming soon. The biggest issue will be getting the theme ported over.

Quicksilver and Leopard

fusion94 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:31:42 +0000

Ever since I upgraded all my boxes to Leopard Quicksilver has been having issues. While searching for a new release I've located a solution that seems to have fixed most of my issues. Here's what to do.

Quit Quicksilver if running.
Delete all traces of Quicksilver by deleting these 4 files.

/Applications/Quicksilver.app
~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver
~/Library/Preferences/com.blacktree.Quicksilver.plist
~/Library/Caches/Quicksilver

Head over to http://lipidity.com/software/quicksilver/ and download and install Quicksilver B5X.
Launch Terminal and run the following commands.

chmod 0644 /Applications/Quicksilver.app/Contents/Info.plist

Open Quicksilver and go through the setup WITHOUT installing any plugins.
Open or relaunch Terminal and run the following commands.

defaults write com.blacktree.Quicksilver "Cutting Edge Features" -bool yes
defaults write com.blacktree.Quicksilver "Feature Level" 3

Quit and relaunch Quicksilver.
You can now adjust your settings and preferences and install some plugins.

I'm not saying this will work for you but is has made Quicksilver more stable for me.

Also to note is that the Quicksilver Interface plugin - Bezel HUD is pretty sweet.

Commenting

fusion94 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:37:14 +0000

So I've turned anonymous commenting back on for blog posts. In the old Wordpress installation comment spam was handled by akismet and comments were moderated.

Now that I've converted most of the content to Drupal I'm testing a new approach. Anonymous users can now comment again but they must fill out some rudimentary contact information as well as successfully submit a Math CAPTCHA. Once this is accomplished their comment will be published.

If this method works then no problems, if it doesn't then the next step would be to use an Image CAPTCHA. If that fails then the final solution would be to use the Image CAPTCHA in conjunction with comment moderation which I'd really rather not do.

Also to note is that I've turned off new user account creation. If you really feel as though you need an account here then email me directly or use the contact form. Be prepared to justify your need for an account.

Let's see how it goes. Let the games begin.

OpenID & Yahoo!

fusion94 — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:39:56 +0000

As of yesterday all of Yahoo's esitmated 248 million users worldwide now have the means to login to any site that supports OpenID. Currently they are only an OpenID provider and not a consumer which means that you cannot login to Yahoo services using your OpenID but I'd imagine that will change sometime in the near future.

If you haven't enabled your Yahoo account for OpenID access then head over to http://openid.yahoo.com and do so.

Drupal Themes Mission Statement

fusion94 — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:33:57 +0000

In some Drupal Themes there is support for displaying the "Mission Statement" across all pages and in others this support is limited to the "Front Page" or "Main Page".

If you are ever using one of the themes with limited mission statement support and want to display the mission statement across all pages you can use this to do so.

In template.php add the following to the bottom of the file:

function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars = array()) { // Make custom variables available to theme templates switch ($hook) { // Send new variable $custom_mission to page.tpl.php case 'page': $vars['custom_mission'] = variable_get('site_mission', ''); break; } return $vars; }

Then in page.tpl.php change:

<?php if ($mission) { ?><?php print $mission ?><?php } ?>
to be

<?php if ($custom_mission) { ?><?php print $custom_mission ?><?php } ?>

These 2 changes should allow the "Mission Statement" to be displayed across all pages.

New Drupal 5 release

fusion94 — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:34:03 +0000

Drupal 5.7 was just released.

There are no new features in this release. Only bug fixes.

The following bugs have been fixed since the 5.6 release:

#208700 by pwolanin. Fix bad backport of #194579. Modified to use Form API.
#118569 by bevan: document how should one set RewriteBase, if under a VirtualDocumentRoot. Backport by Bart Jansens.
- Patch #115606 by Junyor, thesaint_02: added support for PHP 5.2's 'recoverable fatal errors'.
#209409 by Heine, webernet, dww: more accurate register globals value checking

Go get it here.

Site Moved

fusion94 — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:20:25 +0000

I've moved all the content off of http://fusion94.org/blog and have imported here into the Damage Studios site. It was getting tiring trying to determine where to blog and since the old site was running WordPress and I'm now doing more Drupal related work it made sense to move it into Drupal. Thanks to PathAuto and aliasing about 98% of the old urls redirect properly.

I know that there are some things not quite right but I hope to resolve these issues in the next week or so.

R.I.P Joshua Brendan Neal

fusion94 — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:41:43 +0000

another ex-va colleague ... 33 years old ... 2nd christmas in a row where an ex-va has passed on...this sucks...

God willing, It's the last time I'll say goodbye
God willing, I'll see you on the other side

Drupal 6 Release Candidate 2

fusion94 — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:42:58 +0000

Drupal 6 RC2 has now been released.

This release is fairly stable and while it may not be ready for a production site it's pretty rock solid.

For more information about this release and/or Drupal 6 please read more here.

PHP 4.4.8 Released

fusion94 — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:21:55 +0000

PHP 4.4.8 has now been released.

This release wraps up all the outstanding patches for the PHP 4.4 series, and is therefore the last normal PHP 4.4 release.

For a full list of changes in PHP 4.4.8, see the ChangeLog.

Merry Christmas…Happy Hannukah…etc etc

fusion94 — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:31:36 +0000

This is just damn funny…

fusion94 — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:30:09 +0000

Drupal 6 Release Candidate 1

fusion94 — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:38:38 +0000

Drupal 6 RC1 has now been released.

The changes from the last beta version are improved embedded developer documentation, strengthened several update functions to ensure that updates are properly applied for Drupal core and contributed modules, revised most user help text and form descriptions to be more understandable and accurate, made user logins more secure, improved right to left language support for several features, and improved table indexes to help with referential integrity and improve performance.

For more information about this release please read more here.

Upgraded Wordpress

fusion94 — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:21:50 +0000

I upgraded wordpress last night and need to fix all my plugins so please be patient.

Happy Turkey Day Turkeys…

fusion94 — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:20:45 +0000

SourceForge.net - 8 years old

fusion94 — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:00:31 +0000

On Saturday, November 17th, 2007 SourceForge.net celebrated 8 years of life.

Here are a few stats:
Days to write original sourceforge.net code: 58 days
Registered Projects: 162,479
Registered Users: 1,729,574
# of Downloads Top 100: 1,641,654,250
# of Project Pageviews Top 100: 1,212,576,253
# of Hosted Pageviews Top 100: 6,283,590,491

Not bad after 8 years.

Bay Area Hypocrites….

fusion94 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:22:27 +0000

So the news is out....Barry Bonds has been indicted for perjury. And it appears that some of the liberals in the Bay Area are now clamoring for his head. Here are a few quotes:

"im a born sf chick, a lifelong giants fan......and i hope barry finally gets what he deserves! the arrogant person that he is. i can't stand the guy."

"Wonder how he'll look in a bright orange jumpsuit? Maybe he can share a cell with Greg Anderson?"

"he cheats -- while breaking the most important record in sports. he lies -- to a grand jury. good riddance."

"Fantastic! I hope ASSterisk and his big head spends some time behind bars."

"Friggin Finally. Send him to jail and lets never mention his name again."

Whats amazing about this is that these are quotes from Bay Area people who are known for being fairly liberal. I wonder if you were the same people that defended Bill Clinton for committing perjury because it was just a lie about sex to congress.

Hypocrites....

Absolute Genius

fusion94 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:53:04 +0000

Honeymoon Troubles…

fusion94 — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:22:04 +0000

Enough said..

Bonds and the HR Chase

fusion94 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:19:35 +0000

Regardless of whether Bonds doped or not the fact of the matter is that up until 2004 Steroids were not illegal to use according to MLB rules. And it wasn't until 2006 that MLB decided to ban and test for greenies (amphetamines).

I'm not saying that Aaron used either of these substances during the course of his career but we only have his word to verify this as testing by MLB wasn't done for either of these substances.

Bonds is being singled out currently due to allegations of use. There is no definitive proof as of yet.

Having played baseball up to the college level there will always be individuals who try and circumvent the rules and the spirit of baseball. There are plenty of players currently in the Hall of Fame who used steroids, greenies, corked bats, scuffed or altered the ball or used an illegal substance on the ball. Shall we pull those players from the Hall of Fame? Does the fact that these players might have committed one of these infractions diminish their career accomplishments?

Just some random thoughts.