The Shape of Everything
A website mostly about Mac stuff, written by Gus Mueller
Myself on NSBrief
Nov 6, 2012

Saul Mora, the host of NSBrief, was recently in town and visited FM's world headquarters where he interviewed me for a podcast. I had a good time recording this- it's nice being in the same room as someone else when making a podcast. I think it adds something to it that you just don't get when recording over the net (and as soon as teleportation is invented, this won't be a problem anymore).

We talk about a whole bunch of things, VoodooPad, FlySketch, FMDB, how certain parts of Acorn are implemented, and lots of other things: NSBrief #71: Gus Mueller.

The Seattle Stranger's Endorsements for the 2012 General Election
Oct 18, 2012

"This year, we get to vote on reelecting our Muslim socialist president, legalizing pot, legalizing gay marriage, mandating burrito drops—this election is so fucking exciting that you're going to need a Xanax smoothie right after you vote.

"But you do have to vote—because all that exciting shit isn't going to legalize itself. Both gay marriage and legal pot are teetering on the brink. If they lose, it'll be because you had that Xanax smoothie before you voted. If they win, it's because you voted for gay marriage and legal pot—and free burrito drops—before you had your Xanax smoothie.

"Even the governor's race is exciting this year: Republican Rob McKenna is running for governor, and he's a right-wing, anti-choice fuckwad who wants to lock up pot smokers, break up gay couples, and give you zero burritos. Vote for Democrat Jay Inslee instead, a man who kicked off his campaign with a solemn promise to legalize gay burritos everywhere."

Anyway, that's how the Seattle Stranger starts out with its 2012 election guide. Lots of exciting stuff to vote for this year in the state of Washington!

Personally I'm most interested in Initiative 502, which is about legalizing marijuana for folks 21 and older (I'm fully in support of this- check out New Approach Washington for more info).

I'm also in favor of legalizing gay marriage as well. And if we get the Democratic governor in too… I bet we get formally kicked out of the US of A for being a bit too progressive.

iCloud: Sharing done wrong
Oct 18, 2012

Dan Moren for Macworld, iCloud: Sharing done wrong:

"For example, if you’d like to take a text file created in TextEdit and stored in iCloud, and then edit it in some other program, there’s no easy way to do so. No other program can see that data, either on the Mac or the iPad. In fact, no iOS program at all can see the files stored in TextEdit, because there’s no equivalent Apple text editor on that platform. The same goes for PDFs and images: You can save them in iCloud via Preview on OS X, but when you jump to your iPad or iPhone, those files are nowhere to be found."

And

"Since OS X Leopard, Apple has been diligently constructing a system of versioning and backing up files, yet somehow it has permitted this unholy mess to accumulate. As with sharing files between applications, the strengths of features like Auto Save and Versions go out the window when multiple users are involved, leading straight to a world where files have names like Apple_Presentation_version_3-Lex-final-really.key"

iCloud document syncing drives me nuts, and the lack of sharing files is the main reason why I went with Dropbox for VoodooPad 5. Collaboration is pretty big these days, and I don't understand why Apple is going the opposite route and making it harder to share files between apps on the same computer, let alone with your friends and colleagues.

Wolf's Technote for OpenSSL on OS X
Oct 16, 2012

Technical Note TNNaN: OpenSSL on OS X

"Long story short: we screwed up when we included OpenSSL (libcrypto) in OS X in the first place.

(We learned our lesson and didn’t repeat the mistake with iOS.)

Now there’s some transitionin’ to do."

This has been a pain for me, so I'm glad to see this technote finally come out.

Quadratus
Oct 11, 2012

Here's a bit of trivia that has stymied me for years, and just recently a lightbulb finally switched on my in head while doing a bit of light reading (specifically about the quadratic equation).

Bézier curves come in two flavors, quadratic and cubic. The naming of these guys has always tripped me up, because quadratic curves have three control points and cubic curves have four.

Wait, that sounds backwards. Quad = 3, cube = 4?

Turns out that the word "quadratus" is latin for "square". Which in a roundabout way makes sense because there's four sides to a square. And quadratic bézier curves get their name from being a 2nd order curve (cubic béziers get their name from being a 3rd order curve).

Why oh why, didn't they name it the Square Equation, or something more sensible? Then I wouldn't have felt so dumb about confusing quadratic and cubic and cuves for all these years.

Anyway, here's a little graphic I just made in Acorn 3.5 using the new Sunburst filter:

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Myself on iDeveloper Live Chatting About JSTalk
Sep 12, 2012

I was on iDeveloper Live yesterday, incoherently talking about what JSTalk is and its past, present, and future. (I got very little sleep the night before so if I sound a bit off and rumbly, that's my excuse).

It was fun though, and I talk a tiny bit about my ideas for future versions JSTalk 2.0 (a new name, XPC, Mocha, and other stuff).

NYT: A Critic’s Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical
Sep 7, 2012

Dwight Garner: A Critic’s Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical

Marx understood that criticism doesn’t mean delivering petty, ill-tempered Simon Cowell-like put-downs. It doesn’t necessarily mean heaping scorn. It means making fine distinctions. It means talking about ideas, aesthetics and morality as if these things matter (and they do). It’s at base an act of love. Our critical faculties are what make us human.

RGB Colorspace Atlas
Sep 6, 2012

As seen on Colossal, an RGB Colorspace Atlas.

The RGB Colorspace Atlas by New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach is a massive tome containing digital offset prints of every variation of RGB color possible. For you designers, think of it as a three-dimensional version of a Photoshop Acorn color picker.

Very cool. Part of me wishes I had one, but I've got enough stuff as it is.

Mike Ash Friday Q&A: Obtaining and Interpreting Image Data
Aug 31, 2012

Mike Ash Friday Q&A: Obtaining and Interpreting Image Data.

"Cocoa provides some great abstractions for working with images. NSImage lets you treat an image as an opaque blob that you can just draw where you want it. Core Image wraps a lot of image processing in an easy-to-use API that frees you from worrying about how individual pixels are represented. However, sometimes you really just want to get at the raw pixel data in code. Scott Luther suggested today's topic: fetching and manipulating that raw pixel data."

Tasty pixels.

Identical Cousins
Aug 28, 2012

My friends Brent and Michael Simmons have started a new podcast named "Identical Cousins".

I'm about halfway through the episode, and I like what I hear so far.

I've also been enjoying Core Intuition from my friends Daniel Jalkut and Manton Reece, as well as Edge Cases from more friends Andrew Pontious and Wolf Rentzsch. (OK, I don't know Andrew like the other guys, but if he's friends with Wolf then he's friends with me. Also, make sure to listen to a recent episode of theirs- AppleScript's Glorious Failure, and not just because JSTalk is mentioned).

So who's going to start a pizza podcast with me?

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