Using RubyMotion to Build Something Useful

The Chicago RubyMotion User Group held its inaugural meeting this week. Thank you Dave Astels for organizing the group and for asking me to present. Thanks also to Dev Bootcamp for hosting the event.

Slides are embedded here:

OS X and RubyMotion, Finishing Up

There is something I neglected to cover in a previous blog post, Building an OS X App With RubyMotion. Once you’ve written the OS X app, where do you find the executable, and how do you add it to the Applications folder on the Mac?

Long-time Mac enthusiasts may already know how to do this. The information is included here for completeness.

Find, Drag, and Drop

First thing to note: A Mac app named [random-app].app is actually a directory, even though it appears to be a file when viewed in the Applications folder. If you’re curious, right-click on any app in the Applications folder and choose Show Package Contents from the speed menu.

A Portable Hack for Parallella

Beaglebone Black, Raspberry Pi, and Parallella are three small, powerful Linux-based computers. But in order to make these devices truly portable, we need a way to carry a monitor and keyboard along. This article describes one hack that works.

Inspiration in a Suitcase

The HP 5036 Microprocessor Lab gave me my first exposure to assembler language. I was eighteen, working my first software internship, and loving every minute of it. When I devised ways to complete my regular work faster than management expected, I had some time on my hands. So I spent time learning assembler with the HP 5036.

Building an OS X App With RubyMotion

RubyMotion’s OS X support enabled me to solve a small problem yesterday. Here’s the story.

Background on Backup

No matter how much money we spend on computers, the data we create is worth more. The best data protection employs several levels of redundancy.

My backup system starts with Apple’s Time Machine, which handles first level backups painlessly in the background. Time machine is even more effective when multiple disks are used. I like to combine that with online solutions. Redundancy is a good thing.

USB-attached drives work great with Time Machine. I found that Time Machine was inconsistent over WiFi, and when it failed, troubleshooting took too much time. That was a few years ago and things have probably improved since then. I’ve never had to troubleshoot a USB-attached Time Machine drive. USB just works. Except when it doesn’t. And that’s where RubyMotion proved helpful.

:TOhtml - Using Vim Code Snippets in Keynote Presentations

When giving a presentation to a group of developers, you might want to add blocks of code to your slides. It’s helpful to maintain the syntax highlighting while you copy the code. :TOhtml offers a quick way to copy code snippets from Vim to Keynote, while syntax highlighting remains intact.