semi/signal

One of those simple things which has eluded me for far too long. I finally found the solution here:

While the above is good to know, I’ve also discovered I don’t need it. I was looking to convert an XML DOM object, from an AJAX call, to plain text, but the XMLHttpRequest.responseText property provides just that. For jQuery users like myself, the XMLHttpRequest can be access via a synchronous jQuery.ajax call as the return value, or asynchronously via. the jQuery.ajax.complete callback or the jQuery.ajax.success callback (as of jQuery 1.4 the XMLHttpRequest object is now the third parameter).

The following piece of C# code to open a file for reading (an MS Word document, opened by Word), generated an IOException.

The IOException:

Not too unusual, but curiously, the following code, to do the same same thing, did not generate any exceptions and the file was read successfully.

I’d always assumed that File.OpenRead() was equivalent to the File.Open() call above.
Bad assumption.
It looks like the FileShare flag is set to FileShare.Read not FileShare.ReadWrite by File.OpenRead().

Note that the FileShare flag is a bit misleading as described by the docs, it doesn’t only apply to subsequent operations. Here’s a good explanation by Darin Dimitrov from stackoverflow:

In the case of future openers, a FileShare.Read means “future openers can open the file for reading”. In the case of past openers, FileShare.Read means “open this file for me only if it has past openers that opened it for reading only”. That’s why FileShare.ReadWrite needs to be used here, because Excel opens the file for writing.

I came across the following video of a toddler using an iPad for the first time. It’s amazing to watch and see how quickly she is able to acclimate to the touchscreen interface and navigate to and launch the apps she wants. I certainly haven’t seen kids able to do this with the traditional mouse/keyboard combo much less a touchpad on a laptop or netbook.

This is exactly the reason I was optimistic for the JooJoo … and why I’m optimistic for the iPad and the HP Slate, and touchscreens in general … it’s the touch-based user input which is poised to radically reshape and simplify the personal computing experience.

The accompanying blog post at laughing squid provides a nice write-up and analysis of the UX experiment. The concluding remarks are interesting:

Most of all, though, it’s cool to consider that as one of the new Children of Cyberspace, her expectations about computing will be shaped by the fact that she’s growing up in a touchscreen world.

The video along with this remark instantly reminded me of the TED conference where Jeff Han presented his multitouch interface and expressed his disappointment, in regards to the $100 laptop, of introducing a new generation to computing with the standard mouse and pointer interface.

It’s also amazing to remember seeing this video is 2006, where multitouch seemed like some conceptual idea that would never find its way into any real consumer-level product – only about a year later the iPhone was introduced.

Useful for when you need to set HTTP headers when serving file downloads. The mime_content_type function is deprecated and in my case was just returning an empty string. The recommended alternative, using PECL finfo_file, should work fine, but adding and compiling in a PECL extension just for this seems like overkill, especially as you have more control using an array. I’m also never crazy about adding dependencies unless they’re absolutely necessary.

This is from snipplr, but includes the image/png type which was, curiously, missing.

Possibly the best explanation ever on how to execute a *nix script:

To run a non-executable sh script, use:

sh myscript

To run a non-executable bash script, use:

bash myscript

To start an executable (which is any file with executable permission); you just specify it by its path:

/foo/bar /bin/bar ./bar

To make a script executable, give it the necessary permission:

chmod +x bar ./bar

When a file is executable, the kernel is responsible for figuring out how to execte it. For non-binaries, this is done by looking at the first line of the file. It should contain a hashbang:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

The hashbang tells the kernel what program to run (in this case the command /usr/bin/env is ran with the argument bash). Then, the script is passed to the program (as second argument) along with all the arguments you gave the script as subsequent arguments.

That means every script that is executable should have a hashbang. If it doesn’t, you’re not telling the kernel what it is, and therefore the kernel doesn’t know what program to use to interprete it. It could be bash, perl, python, sh, or something else. (In reality, the kernel will often use the user’s default shell to interprete the file, which is very dangerous because it might not be the right interpreter at all or it might be able to parse some of it but with subtle behavioural differences such as is the case between sh and bash).

The Objective-C code from Rick’s World,

I was actually messing around with Monobjc and wondering how to work with NSOpenPanel, the code above provided a bit of a starting point for me. Here’s my code, which is not a translation of what’s above, but gives an example of how things work with C# and Monobjc,

The properties are self-explanatory and the code is simple enough, so I won’t bother with any sort explanation.

The amazing, but unused, child-killer illustration from Fallout 2, created by Brian Menze.

This image was unused and the only Vault Boy image to ever be cut from Fallout 2. (I’m sure you can figure out why) I remember when I got the request to do a perk illustration for “child Killer” that there would be no way to keep in from being offensive. I mean really! How do you make an illustration of “child killer” and keep it from being offensive? Anyway for some reason, I thought this was the least offensive way to do it. I have no idea what i was thinking. Even the designer who requested it realized it was a bad idea, so we nixed it. Looking back on it now, I can’t believe I drew this.

h/t HellForge

STS-130 Space Shuttle Endeavor launch from the Intracoastal Waterway Bridge in Ponte Vedra, Florida; about 115 miles from the launch pad. This launch was extra special because it is NASA’s last scheduled night launch of the space shuttle program.

Credit & copyright: James Vernacotola

After spending some time attempting to P/Invoke the stat() function, I discovered the wonderful Mono.Unix.Native namespace (found in the Mono.Posix assembly) which has some great stuff for lower-level Unix/Linux work.

Here’s what I did to pull a file’s inode number:

Unfortunately, the method mentioned in the Mono Technical FAQ, where you can check System.Environment.OSVersion.Platform for a value of 6 doesn’t work (as of Mono 2.6). I got the following code from this thread, which works well enough,