I recently had the need to invite a few people to a private GitHub repository of mine. No big deal, log in, go to my repositories, select the repo I want, and then click… on… wait a minute. Where is my Settings tab? It’s not there. What the hell?

I own the repo. It’s mine. But my Settings tab is missing.

I tried another browser – same thing. Cleared caches. Nothing. Then I did something so odd (that worked) that I feel like freaking McGyver.

In the URL for my repo, I appended a “/settings” and hit ENTER.

It worked, and now my Settings tab is back. Try this if you lose yours. I am still shaking my head.

Sometimes when coding, you need music to develop a rhythm that you can attach your mind to. The code flows easier, and you start thinking about connections that you need to wire up in your code to expose and procure functionality.

But if you listen to music that contains obvious lyrics, changing time signatures, etc. – that can ruin your coding flow. You need something that exists in the background and facilitates your ability to go from one thing to the next without distraction.

I have found such music. Norse authentic stuff.

Heilung is an experimental folk band made up of members from Denmark, Norway, and Germany. Their music is based on texts from artifacts of the Iron Age originated by the Northern European peoples of the Iron Age and Viking Age. They describe their music as “amplified history from early medieval northern Europe”. Much of their artistry is derived from Norse gods and goddesses. “Heilung” is a German word meaning “healing” in English.

This kind of music has chanting, ancient instrumentation, etc. It fades and inspires like no other music I have come across. I feel like I am participating in something special. One that relaxes as well as stimulates. Which is an odd thing to say?

The instrumentation:

• drums, including one with horse skin painted with human blood, two drums with deerskin and a drum with goatskin
• bones, including a human forearm bone and deer bones
• a buffalo horn rattle
• a clay rattle with human ashes
• a Hindu ritual bell
• antiques from temples
• a reconstructed silver cup from the Viking age
• a ravanahatha (an ancient Indian instrument)
• numerous other rattles, whistles, and percussive instruments

It’s weird – I know that. It’s unique. It’s based on history to some degree. Keeping old gods alive. And helping to keep the code flowing.

Summer is about over, but your Pastis drinking doesn’t need to be. Here are some alternative Pastes-Related drinks to try before the leaves turn.

• La Soleil (The sunshine) – with a dash of Lemon syrup
• La Mazout (Fuel) – with, not even joking, coca-cola (normally asked for by Belgians) – be careful though, in Germany, a Mazout is beer mixed with coca-cola
• Le Velo (Bicycle) – with a dash of Orange syrup
• When you add Grenadine to a pastis, it is called a “Tomate” (tomatoe).
• You can also add mint syrup ; it is called a “Perroquet” (a parrot).
• You can add Orgeat syrup ; its name is the “Mauresque”

I’m at a loss just like everyone else who has a sense of place in the world. History. Artworks. Architecture. Style. Burning to the ground.

My heart goes out to the world right now as this painful destruction slowly takes place in the heart of Paris.

I have yet found a satisfactory way to apply a fixed background image to a page for mobile. For some performance reason, as I understand it, a fixed image for mobile is a dancing unicorn. Which has so far eluded me.

I’d like to implement it to match the desktop, but I’m not going to jump through brittle hoops to achieve it. Something will change in the technology landscape that renders the hack moot.

I even considered page scroll position changing. Probably the ultimate hack. But I dislike hacks and also magic numbers.

If anyone has decent solutions, it’s like to see them. Without too much nesting or JavaScript.

There are times when you have Class objects that you need to communicate back to some part of your application. With delegation, it’s a 1-to-1 relationship. Generally where the object(s) are instantiated is where you’d like to gain insight upon an event or events.

Notifications can handle 1-to-n types of relationships. That’s not what we’re doing here.

So, for this example, we have a Class object we’ll call blob. After it’s created, we want to know when a button within the object is selected. It’s within the object itself, so it’s out of scope in our ViewController. There is where delegation comes into play. Here is the class object in question.

protocol BlobDelegate {
    func blobPressed(index: Int)
}

import UIKit

class Blob: UIView {

    var delegate: BlobDelegate?
    var button: UIButton!
    
    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame:frame)
        button = UIButton(frame: frame)
        button.backgroundColor = UIColor.red.withAlphaComponent(0.2)
        button.addTarget(self, action: #selector(clicked), for: .touchUpInside)
        self.addSubview(button)
    }
    
    @objc func clicked() {
        delegate?.blobPressed(index: 2)
    }
    
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }
}

The top bit of code is the protocol – which is our delegate. When our button is pressed, it calls the function in the delegate – and passes an Int as the argument. For now it’s just a simple hard-coded number to show it working.

All one need to do now is to assign the delegate when creating the Class object from outside the class (instantiation) while conforming to the protocol.

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController, BlogDelegate
{
    var blob: Blob!
    
    override func viewDidLoad()
    {
        blob = Blob(frame: CGRect(x:0, y:0, width: 100; height: 100))
        self.view.addSubview(blob)
        blob.delegate = self
    }

    // Method from the delegate.
    func blobPressed(index: Int) {
        print("From blob: \(index)")
    }
}

I recently had a project request to allow a user to experience different rotary encoders and how they might react with digital LEDs. In short, getting encoders wired to a board to directly control the UI in an iOS application. This saved me from having to alter soldered LED counts and allowed logic and animation to take place in easier to update software.

Since the Adafruit Feather 32u4 has onboard BLE, this alleviated the need to use a shield for BLE communication between the board and my iOS application. It wasn’t quite as straightforward as some online documentation would have you believe.

My final prototype was the 32u4 board, two encoders, a rechargeable battery for the 32u4, my phone, and my Swift iOS application. My communication was uni-directional from the board to the iOS application. It’s easily possible to have the iOS talk back to the board, but was unnecessary for my prototype.

If anyone wants my Sketch and source for the iOS application, I can make a stripped down version of those available if anyone is interested. Leave a comment – and if I get enough requests, I’ll take the time to release those – as well as insights gained during the development process.

What do these three things have in common? They are awesome. And they go together seamlessly.

I have recently taken up a quick project where I need to communicate with a collection of addressable LED bulbs in a custom lighting system. Pretty easy coding, but I wanted it to be able to run in a browser – using a cheap tablet and laptop to control equally. So I needed to snag a decent editor for Javascript, HTML, and CSS. I already had Sublime Text 2 and I enjoyed it in the past. I discovered that Sublime Text 3 had been released, and decided to use the better bits. It makes my development so much smoother. I used to use BBEdit, but I prefer how flexible ST2/3 really are.

So I currently have ST3 running. On top of that, I have iTunes pumping sweet Carbon Based Lifeforms (artist) into my Bose QuietComfort 35 Series II headphones. Joy. The current album is entitled “Derelicts”. It’s ambient enough to allow me to concentrate quite well, but it does not drone with a whimper. It must be scientifically formulated to stimulate just the right neurons for the type of work that I do. I float along and my fingers tap out the source code to the patterned beats.

Beside me stands a bottle of Ito En: Oi Ocha Unsweetened Green Tea With Roasted Rice. There is something magical about it. The first few sips taste like the bottom of a stagnant puddle but then the flavor slowly turns to a nice flavor. It feels tied to the earth in some unexplainable way. Honest.

伊藤園：お米焼き菓子

It’s a great way to spend an afternoon. Now, if I only had a window in this office. I’ll get a screensaver going on the Apple TV I guess.