Important differences for me as a parent

• No way for kids to get out of the game other than the home button. There are no ads, promos, in app purchase buttons, settings, start buttons, additional screens, or anything else. If the app is open all you see is the game board ready to play.
• No sounds. This app does not make noise even when the kids are adjusting the volume and flipping the sound/vibration toggle.
• It’s a universal app so you don’t need to buy it again on the ipad.
• Has pictures of real animals and entertains the kids. Ok, maybe this one isn’t a differentiator.

I did my best to make it worth the 99 cents.

Ocean Match!

Animal Match!

Rails development environment has incredibly slow page loads while production is fast. And when I say slow, I mean 15-30 seconds. Rails server will likely report the page as loading in under a second but it’s still taking 30 secons to show up.

The Cause

DNS problems. Nothing to do with rails, this is just the environment that’s not working. If your DNS is working correctly and you’re seeing page loads a bit faster than what I’m describing (3-8 seconds) check out rails-dev-boost

The Solution

Verify that you can ping the domain name you’re browsing to. I had some problem with my /etc/hosts file that a little bit of experimentation resolved.

If you found this helpful you might like to follow me on Twitter

Getting your feet wet: single file search

Searching a single file for a string is about as simple as it gets so lets jump right into it. The syntax is:

grep [search string] [file]

Here’s an example

grep "header" log/dev.log

Responds with:

Dec 09 17:16:24 Send header "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8"
Dec 09 17:16:24 "Pragma: public: 1"
Dec 09 17:16:24 Send header "Content-Type: image/png"

Case insensitive search

Adding the -i flag to grep makes it search without case sensitivity

grep -i "HeAdEr" log/dev.log

Responds with:

Dec 09 17:16:24 Send header "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8"
Dec 09 17:16:24 "Pragma: public: 1"
Dec 09 17:16:24 Send header "Content-Type: image/png"

Learning something useful: recursive search

The previous example could be done casually in a text editor. Searching all the files in a directory is also doable but from some text editors (the ones I use at least) it’s not quite as easy. The -r flag indicates recursion but I’ll be combining it with the -i flag in the examples below to retain case insensitive search.

grep -ri "iboutlet" .  

Responds with:

./InspectAppDelegate.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;
./InspectAppDelegate.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet TemplateListTableViewController *templateListController;
./InspectAppDelegate.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UINavigationController *navigationController;
./LoginViewController.h:    IBOutlet UITextField *usernameField;
./LoginViewController.h:    IBOutlet UITextField *passwordField;
./LoginViewController.h:    IBOutlet UITextField *subdomainField;
./LoginViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITextField *usernameField;
./LoginViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITextField *passwordField;
./LoginViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITextField *subdomainField;
./ProjectAddViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITextField *projectNameField;
./ProjectDetailsImageViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIImageView *imageView;
./ProjectDetailsImageViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIImage *image;
./ProjectDetailsTextEditViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITextView *answerField;
./ProjectDetailsTextEditViewController.h:@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UILabel *fieldName;

Special cases: getting a list of files

Recursive search is great but it can give you tons of results from the same file which isn’t ideal in all cases (eg: log files). Getting a list of the files which contain matches rather than a list of matches can be done by adding the -l flag

grep -ril "iboutlet" .

Responds with:

./InspectAppDelegate.h
./LoginViewController.h
./ProjectAddViewController.h
./ProjectDetailsImageViewController.h
./ProjectDetailsTextEditViewController.h

But that’s not all: additional flags

Grep is a mature and powerful tool and as expected it has far more options and uses than i’m going to go into here but I do feel compelled to list a few more flags that may be helpful.

-A 20

Prints 20 (or whatever number you specify) lines after each match.

-B 20

Same thing as -A but before each match instead of after.

-C 40

Same thing as -B 20 -A 20 (C for context).

-n  or --line-number   

Adds the line number of the match to the results.

-v or --invert-match     

Invert match (get all the results that don’t match the pattern provided).

A need for speed: making common searches faster within project directories

If you’re on OS X and you’re looking for a fast case insensitive search within a directory that shows only file names (grep -ril “pattern”) you should be using mdfind (spotlight on command line).

mdfind -onlyin . "iboutlet"

Responds with:

/Users/pauldenya/full/path/to/LoginViewController.h
/Users/pauldenya/full/path/to/ProjectDetailsTextEditViewController.h
/Users/pauldenya/full/path/to/ProjectDetailsImageViewController.h
/Users/pauldenya/full/path/to/ProjectAddViewController.h

For those times when you’re not working on OS X a pruned find function can work wonders for improving slow search in large project directories. The idea is that in many situations, not all directories under the project directory need to be searched so we come up with a list of directories that do need to be searched and put them in a function in your profile.

#this goes in ~/.bashrc or /etc/profile
function projectfind() {
    grep -ril "$1" /path/to/project/search/me
    grep -ril "$1"  /path/to/project/search/here/too
    grep -ril "$1"  /path/to/project/web/js
}

projectfind "iboutlet"

This approach is project specific which isn’t great if you’re often switching between or starting new projects. You could change “/path/to/project/” to “./” but then you’d always need to be in the root project directory for search to work. The solution here is to pipe files to search to grep and use grep to prune the list in line. Here’s an example for a function that will search within the current directory but ignore log files and css directories:

#this goes in ~/.bashrc or /etc/profile
function myfind() {
   find . | grep -vE "\.log$|css" | xargs grep "$1"
}

You can add additional logic by adding to OR clauses to the regex used in the first grep statement or adding additional grep statements.

$.ajax({
	url: ‘/‘,
	pudding: ‘chocolate’,
	success: function() {
		alert(this.pudding); //alerts chocolate
	}
});

If you’re installing postgresql via homebrew on Lion you might be encountering errors like these:

psql: could not connect to server: Permission denied
	Is the server running locally and accepting
	connections on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

createuser: could not connect to database postgres: could not connect to server: Permission denied
	Is the server running locally and accepting
	connections on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

The Cause

Lion comes with a version of postgres already installed and uses those binaries by default. In general you can get around this by using the full path to the homebrew postgres binaries but there may be still issues with other programs.

The Solution

If a quick fix is all you’re looking for, run this:

curl http://nextmarvel.net/blog/downloads/fixBrewLionPostgres.sh | sh

Here’s the code the previous line runs. To sum up, it moves your OS X default postgres binaries into an archive folder and symlinks the homebrew versions in place of them.

BREW_POSTGRES_DIR=`brew info postgres | awk '{print $1"/bin"}' | grep "/postgresql/"`
LION_POSTGRES_DIR=`which postgres | xargs dirname`
LION_PSQL_DIR=`which psql | xargs dirname`

sudo mkdir -p $LION_POSTGRES_DIR/archive
sudo mkdir -p $LION_PSQL_DIR/archive

for i in `ls $BREW_POSTGRES_DIR`
do
	if [ -f $LION_POSTGRES_DIR/$i ]
	then
		sudo mv $LION_POSTGRES_DIR/$i $LION_POSTGRES_DIR/archive/$i
		sudo ln -s $BREW_POSTGRES_DIR/$i $LION_POSTGRES_DIR/$i
	fi

	if [ -f $LION_PSQL_DIR/$i ]
	then
		sudo mv $LION_PSQL_DIR/$i $LION_PSQL_DIR/archive/$i
		sudo ln -s $BREW_POSTGRES_DIR/$i $LION_PSQL_DIR/$i
	fi
done

If you enjoyed this post, follow me on Twitter

1. Download and install MySQL (any version, I did 5.5.14 which is the latest as of this writing). Choose the “Mac OS X ver. 10.6 (x86, 64-bit), DMG Archive” option.
2. From Terminal, run the following in your rails app’s directory:

   sudo gem install mysql2 --version=0.2.6 -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql
   GEMDIR=`dirname \`bundle show rails\``
   sudo install_name_tool -change libmysqlclient.18.dylib /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.18.dylib ${GEMDIR}/mysql2-0.2.6/lib/mysql2/mysql2.bundle

3. In your database.yml file point to MAMP’s mysql.sock file:

   socket: /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock

We’re working on a temporary mural–who knows if people really dig it, it can be permanent ;)–for the advertising agency I work at, Euro RSCG NY, and this will be one of the many elements… about to go in and color it. I don’t think I’m at liberty to talk about it much but what I can say is that any illustrators that are looking to contribute to something that could possibly get some cool press, feel free to email me for details at edgar@nextmarvel.net

Stay Inspired!

+EAZ

1. Graphics, photography and developed creative language

2. Some cool and talked about viral promotion ad on youtube

3. An “interactive” site making you experience the product

4. A stir within the public discourse as a result of some promo activity/event or daring act in the community

… and much more… Social interaction, as we know it, has become an ongoing relationship. We now “follow” each other. We need to “blog”, “tweet”, “like” and much more.

The intuitive evolution of a good brand is one that instinctively understands that this age is compelling businesses to interact with their audiences at a level never experienced or thought to be possible. The questions of today are more about how do we truly ensure to make this platform of communication effective at all, as well as measure results, who/when do we hire? intern or social media expert? how do we collect data, analyze, and use it for the future?

That, among a million other questions are in the scene. These questions are not at all impossible to answer. They are as possible as they can be upon research, information, like statistics, and heavy analytics.

There are fine differences in the brand communication model due to the channels of media that are available today via the web.

What’s the point of this post? To contribute and promote thought by giving branding a closer look in the modern world as this world of social marketing has effected it greatly.

Twitter for Mac

The letter count of a tweet with a long link in Twitter for Mac displays what the character count will be after the link is shortened and allows me to post as is.

Twitter.com

On Twitter.com, a tweet with a long link displays the current character count rather than taking into account that the link will be shortened. There is also no way to shorten a link with the default interface and I’m unable to post because the combination of my un-shortened link and the text in my tweet is over 140 characters.

The Solution

I wrote a quick bookmarklet that will parse a tweet in the twitter.com interface and open it in a share window with the shortened link. While this isn’t an ideal solution it’s much faster than going to bit.ly, shortening the link and going back to twitter.com to tweet it.

The Code

var r = /(http|https):\/\/(\w+:{0,1}\w*@)?(\S+)(:[0-9]+)?(\/|\/([\w#!:.?+=&%@!\-\/]))?/;
var theurl = "";
var thetext = "";
$($(".twitter-anywhere-tweet-box-editor").val().split(" ")).each(function(i,v) {
	if(r.test(v)) {
		theurl = v;
	} else {
		thetext += v + " ";
	}
});

window.location.href="http://twitter.com/share?text="+escape(thetext)+"&url="+escape(theurl);

The Bookmarklet

Twitter Shorten