Category: Work

While I was at Onoko I did a standing desk for a while. While it was really good, I found doing it 100% gave be cramps in my legs. Now that I work at home a smaller desk (in additional to sit down desk) that would take up less room and also allow me to move it around the house or even to the garden to work! I had some GERTON legs so I got a £1 piece of wood from the bargain bin and built my own. There are lots of fancy options at Ikea Hackers, but here are the other ideas I looked at:

	At a height of 105cm the BILSTA Bar table would make a perfect standing desk. Its also available as just the base so you can add your own top from a piece of wood the bargain bin or any of: TROFAST / INREDA / ALGOT / KOMPLEMENT / BILLY / BILLY / FJÄLKINGE / IVAR / EKBY LAIVA or even the top off a LACK coffee table
	Another bar table that works is BJÖRKUDDEN. Its quite deep so do can fit too people with laptops facing each other.
	Get the GERTON legs extendable up to 107cm: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/60261626/ Get any of the compatible desks, or a piece of wood from the bargain bin or one of the tops mentioned above. There are also the BILLSTA desk legs, but they’re more expensive and less flexible in terms of tops.
	Use one of the wall mounted leaf desks: BJURSTA NORBERG NORBO
	Select an item from the various wall shelves available. If you want something bigger, buy the sturdiest brackets and again get a piece of wood from the bargain bin or one of the tops mentioned above.

I hope that’s helpful. Sorry the links are to the UK store if you live somewhere else. I’m still wondering if I should eventually get a Cycle Desk!

I use the excellent Source Tree as a visual Git client, and really dislike messages about versioning when I’m coding. Eclipse’s Git colours and overall intrusiveness seem to be particularly bad. I couldn’t find which plugin to remove but I did find the following settings:

This setting will stop Eclipse from automatically attaching its Git functions:

Update: Newer versions of Eclipse seem to use this setting:

If you’ve already loaded some projects before disabling the above setting, you can disconnect those individual projects from Eclipse’s Git functionality here:

I love Java and I love Google App Engine. Google recently announced that they’re adding a new language to the existing languages (Java/Python/Go). My bet is that it’s PHP since:

1) Its the most requested language on the App Engine issue tracker:

2) The session at Google I/O features Stuart Langely and his github is all PHP centric:

https://github.com/sjlangley?tab=repositories

There have been several issues with getting JavaPNS working on Google App Engine. These included:
1) GAE didn’t support sockets or SSL
2) GAE doesn’t support signed jars, the BouncyCastle cryptography library is signed
3) GAE is transitioning to Java 7, and Java 7 has issues reading .p12 certificates

These instructions are for JavaPNS 2.2 and GAE 1.7.7, things may change on both fronts to make things either easier or harder.

1) GAE didn’t support sockets or SSL

With the arrival of GAE 1.7.7 sockets and SSL are now fully supported:
http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2013/04/app-engine-177-released.html

2) GAE doesn’t support signed jars

Remove META-INF/MANIFEST.MF from the latest BouncyCastle jar or download my modified jar of BouncyCastle 1.48

3) Java 7 has issues reading .p12 certificates

a) Generate your .p12 certificate as per Apple’s instructions

b) Install Java 6 JDK

c) Use Java 6’s keytool to convert the .p12 to a .jks

keytool -importkeystore -destkeystore CERTIFICATES.jks -srckeystore CERTIFICATES.p12 -srcstoretype PKCS12

d) Configure JavaPNS to use the .jks format instead of .p12

boolean production = false;
String device = "DEVICE_ID";
String keystore = "CERTIFICATES.jks";
String password = "PASSWORD";
String message = "Hello JKS";

AppleNotificationServer jksServer = new AppleNotificationServerBasicImpl(keystore, password, ConnectionToAppleServer.KEYSTORE_TYPE_JKS, production);
PushNotificationPayload payload = PushNotificationPayload.alert(message);
PushNotificationManager pushManager = new PushNotificationManager();
pushManager.initializeConnection(jksServer);
List<PushedNotification> notifications = pushManager.sendNotifications(payload, Devices.asDevices(device));


Thanks to Palomino Labs Blog for the hints about Java and .p12 files:
http://blog.palominolabs.com/2011/10/18/java-2-way-tlsssl-client-certificates-and-pkcs12-vs-jks-keystores/

I moved my iTunes account from one country to another recently as I am about to move. An annoying thing is iTunes doesn’t know how to update apps that you’ve downloaded from a different country, even though if you download it manually again you get the app for free. It works on the iPhone/iPad, so its really something they should fix in iTunes.

If you have OCD like me it can be very annoying to constantly have a (1) or something by the Apps, meaning you have Apps to update. I recently worked out where this information was stored, and came up with a relatively quick way to update these apps.

1) Open Terminal.app

2) Run the following command:

grep --binary-files=text -A 1 "<key>title" ~/Library/Preferences/*.iTunes.plist

3) Find those apps in iTunes and right click them -> “Show in iTunes Store”

4) Download the app again, if you bought it before it will say something like “This update is free because you have already purchases this app”.

5) After you’ve updated it once, it remembers that you’ve downloaded it from the new country and it can automatically find the update as per usual.

Note: Be careful because if an app has been removed from the App Store altogether, iTunes will sometimes redirect you to another app from the same publisher. This happened to me, I was redirected from the free (discontinued) app to the paid version, and thinking it was the same app I bought an app I didn’t mean to.

1) Copy this script to /var/root/dyndns.sh

#!/bin/sh
if [ ${ip=$(curl -s ifconfig.me)} != ""$(cat ~/.dyndns.ip) ]; then
curl "http://USERNAME:[email protected]/nic/update?hostname=HOSTNAME&myip=$ip&wildcard=NOCHG&mx=NOCHG&backmx=NOCHG"
fi
echo $ip > ~/.dyndns.ip


2) Edit USERNAME, PASSWORD and HOSTNAME for your DynDNS account

3) Check it runs /var/root/dyndns.sh

4) Copy this script to /Library/LaunchDaemons/dyndns.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>dyndns</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/var/root/dyndns.sh</string>
</array>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
</dict>
</plist>


5) Run launchctl load dyndns.plist

6) Run launchctl start dyndns

Notes:
– You can adjust the interval so that the script runs more frequently than every hour by modifying the 3600 seconds
– If you want to update multiple hostnames you can put them in a comma separated list
– For more information on DynDNS see:
http://dyn.com/support/developers/api/perform-update/

I recently jailbroke my Apple TV in order to run a web server on it using iOS-WebStack. I’m not sure if there was a mistake in the dependencies or because I was using the latest 5.2 firmware, but I also had to manually install the following package to get it to work:

apt-get install pcre

I’ve been using Appcelerator’s Titanium to streamline mobile development for Android and iPhone. They have a module for doing Admob ads but there Double Click for Publishers (DFP) module is only available to enterprise customers.

However, as long as you don’t need the DFP’s multiple sizes and just want custom campaigns with Admob backfill, you can use their current free Admob module.

Initial set up
1) Get Titanium’s Admob module here:
https://marketplace.appcelerator.com/apps/795?1803788439

2) In DFP go to your inventory and create mobile ad units for each size of ad you want to server in your app.

3) In your app set the publisherId to the id of your DFP adunit (normally it’s the publisher id from Admob)

var Admob = require('ti.admob');
var adunit = '/123/App320'; //Get this from your inventory in (2)
var adview = Admob.createView({
adBackgroundColor:'black',
primaryTextColor:'blue',
secondaryTextColor:'green',
publisherId:adunit,
width:320,
height:50,
bottom:0
});

Admob backfill
4) If you haven’t already set up an Admob account at http://www.admob.com and create your app to backfill DFP with.

5) Go to your orders and create a new order and line item:
– Enter the inventory sizes you want to use in your apps
– Since you probably just want to back fill almost always, set an end time far in the future
– Likewise set the quantity of your impressions to really high
– Set a low non-zero CPM value so that your ads actually show up
– When you click save, if you need to check “overbook” then do, it just means no one is viewing your ads yet

6) Add the inventory items you created in DFP previously (2)

7) For each ad size add an Admob creative entering the publisher id you created in (4)

Custom campaigns (optional)
If you want to put your own ads in or run custom campaigns for clients

8) Create a new line item in DFP. This can be under the same order you created before since you can use a different CPM value, or you can create a new order to keep things separate.

9) Again select the ad sizes and and adunits you want to use

10) Set the CPM, impressions and time period that your client is paying for

11) Add a new creative with the images or HTML that you want to display

* Note, unlike backfill with Adsense, in backfill with Admob DFP doesn’t know how much advertisers are bidding, so if you run custom campaigns you’re competing with the manual price you entered in (5), not the price that Admob advertisers are paying. However normally this isn’t an issue since if you’re doing custom campaigns they are hopefully bidding quite a bit higher than Admob for it to be with it. See the link below:

https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2549435

Google recently announced the very sad news that they were suspending the free version Google Apps for businesses. Here are some alternatives:

1) Microsoft’s outlook.com

Using domains.live.com you can map your domain and get up to 500 free email addresses.

2) Zoho mail

Zoho mail have a free version avaliable

3) Google Apps for Education / US Non-Profits

If you are an educational institution of US based Non-profit you can still get Google Apps for free

4) Google App Engine + Google Apps

Google App Engine still requires Google Apps to map domains. They’ve still kept a free version with which you can get a single account. You can probably still use multiple email addresses using catch-alls or with Google App’s “groups” feature, enabling anybody on the internet to post. You can sign up for that at the following link, but they check that your referrer is https://appengine.google.com

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3?refererName=AppEngine

A lot of things are moving to being wireless, and Apple even discontinued their compact wired keyboard all the way back in 2010. But I’m still using mine.

Sure it does make the desk setup neater if everything is wireless, but I still need a wire to charge my phone and sync it fast (wireless syncing in iTunes is still quirky) and you have the hassle of constantly changing batteries. I’ve been using rechargeables for a while, which save money and the environment, but its still a pain. USB keyboards also help when trying to access boot options to have a wired keyboard.

I’ve been using a wired keyboard for a while, plugging my phone in to one of the USB ports to charge and sync it. That still left my magic trackpad needing to have batteries. I tried to build my own USB power similar to this one, but after failing bought a Mobee Power Bar and leave it plugged in the other USB port all the time, and now have a really neat setup with no batteries: