Michael Bianco

TextMate: Most Advanced Editor. Ever.

If you haven’t tried out TextMate I command you to download it right now. Its the most powerful and flexible editor I have ever used, I’m having trouble understanding how everything works its complicated. The syntax coloring is amazing, its so incredibly customizable. This is the only Cocoa text-editor I’m aware of that has code-folding, which is a very cool feature. The documentation is awesome and the wiki and mailing list are awesome resources too. It has amazing integration with the command line, allowing almost endless customization!

Color Blender 1.1

I came across a couple bugs in my Color Blender application while using it to create a web-site. The hex values of the colors were always off a little bit from what they should be, and when I selected colors using the “eye dropper” tool (or “eyeglass” tool in Apple’s case) the RGB & hex values always seemed to be shifted a little too. While fixing the problem I figured I’d add a few new features…

Beta Testers Needed

You might have noticed the lack of updates on this site recently; its not just laziness (although that might be part of it :P), I’m working on releasing a new (shareware) application. I’m almost done with the application, the web-site is nearing completion also so its time to beta test it. I’m looking for a bunch of beta testers, here are the requirements: You must have OS X 10.4.x You must have an iPod 3rd generation or higher If you meet those requirements, or have an intel mac, please let me know.

Cocoa Text System

I came across an awesome article on the Cocoa Text System. If you do alot of text editing I recommend you check it out, along with the default key bindings.

Random Tid Bits

Heres some programming tid bits that really didn’t deserve their own post, so I grouped them all together into one post! 😛 else-switch We all know about the common else-if language construct that is available in almost all programming languages, but here one you might of not been aware of: the else-switch statement. [code lang=”javascript”] if(false) { } else switch(number) { case 0: //do something break; case 1: //do something else break; default: //do default action } [/code] Actually, you can follow if with any control statement. For instance, you can have an else-return or an else-break statement. This might be old news to some programmers, but I never knew you could do that!..

Learning Source Code Management

For awhile now I’ve been meaning to learn how source code management works (specifically, how Subversion works), but I never got the chance to do it. Finally the other day I set out to buy a book on SCM, luckily I was able to find a good free book on the subject. If you are interested in wrapping your mind around source code management I recommend you check out Version Control with Subversion.

Download Internet Audio Streams

Streaming Windows Media Player support on the Mac is really bad. Its slow, buggy; simply horrible. However, I really wanted to listen to a show which I could only listen to via streaming WMA format. I started searching the net for a solution and found Mplayer. It worked fairly well, but I really like the ability to skip parts of the show which isn’t possible with a streaming WMA. I kept searching for a way to download the streaming WMA and put it into a WMA file on my hard drive. Mplayer came though again, using the Mplayer command line utility you can easily download the streaming audio to your hard-drive…

App Stop 1.1

App Stop 1.1 has just been released. This release includes the following enhancements: Rewrote the cpu usage code, its now much cleaner Force quitting background applications will remove them from the list immediatly iTunes-like live searching ability added App Stop is now a universal binary Updated to Xcode 2.2, compiling with the latest GCC release This will most likely be the last release of App Stop unless some bugs crop up that I didn’t catch.Enjoy!

Song Analyzer

This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. MacDevCentral is running a story about Tunaric a music analyzer that will, after a few seconds of listening to a song through your computers microphone, tell you what the song name is. I tried it out on a few popular songs, and it actually worked! I was really surprised, I really didn’t expect it to work that well.

The Webdings Font Has a Use!

The Webdings font has alot of common symbols that can be used in web-sites. For instance, the pause, fast-foward, play, etc symbols are all in the Webdings font. This might seem really obvious to seasoned designers, but I never knew this. You can find a listing of what symbols equal what keys on your keyboards here.

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