It has been quite a while since we’ve received new buses, especially a new model, here in Metro Vancouver. This past Monday, the newest buses of the fleet, New Flyer Xcelsior XDE60s, commenced revenue service on the #49. West Vancouver also has some Xcelsiors, but they are the 40 foot diesel versions as shown on the right. They have been in service since January. According to New Flyer, Xcelsiors boast several advantages such as better fuel economy, streamlined design, and a better experience for both the driver and passengers. These new buses look a lot sleeker than their predecessors, however Continue Reading
Debugging NSNotifications on iOS
For iOS developers, this is a really cool technique. Sometimes you want to see all the NSNotifications that get posted in your app, whether it is for debugging, or to see the timing of where listeners can be hooked in. Using breakpoints in Xcode will allow us to inspect the notifications. Follow this procedure to set it up: In Xcode, open the breakpoints panel on the left sidebar. Click the + icon at the bottom left of the panel. Select “Add Symbolic Breakpoint…“ Enter the following details: Symbol: -[NSNotificationCenterpostNotificationName:object:userInfo:] Click Add Action and enter the following details: Debugger Command: po Continue Reading
Getting a new Windows system up and running with Ninite
I have installed Windows quite a few times over this past year, from setting up different operating systems on my home lab server and installing Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 8. You’d think that I would have spent hours downloading all the installers for Chrome, Flash, VLC, Notepad++, PuTTY, 7-Zip, and all the other common programs I use and having to click “Next” buttons a million times. Well fortunately there’s a better solution. I came across Ninite a while ago, and it has saved me a ton of time installing the basic programs I use on Windows. With Ninite, you just need to pick the programs you want from Continue Reading
When frames are too many
I was digging around my backups and came across this mockup of a site my friend and I worked on ten years ago, but never published. This was when Microsoft FrontPage was still around, frames were OK, and <blink>, <marquee> and animated GIFs were the rage, and when the whole world used Internet Explorer. I guess it didn’t occur to us back then that nine frames were eight frames too many. Oh, have times changed 🙂 Today, HTML framesets are rarely used. Server-side scripting such as PHP is used to replicate common code across multiple pages. Client-side alternatives such as CSS Continue Reading
Old blog posts from WordPress 2.6 found and imported
I spent this afternoon digging around my backups, and I was lucky to find my site backup from the end of 2008. I had to find a way to import the posts from WordPress 2.6 into WordPress 3.5.1. Since I had a full site backup, I was able to load the WordPress files and database backup onto my Mac’s local MAMP web development environment (Windows users might use WAMP). From there, I followed the WordPress upgrade procedure. I upgraded directly from WordPress 2.6 to 3.5.1 directly without a hitch, although it recommended to go version by version. Then with a Continue Reading