Woopsi appears to have been adapted into a set of UI components for a real-time operating system called “NuttX”. I’m pleased to see that the code has been useful outside of its original platform and purpose. It now runs on ARM, Atmel and Intel chips, and will even run on the Zilog Z80. NxWidgets can be found here:
It’s about time for another EarthShakerDS release:
Changes this time around include:
I need to finish off the file requester in the level editor and it’ll finally be done.
Looking through this code again, I’m astonished at the level of spaghettification. On the other hand, I did knock the whole thing up in a couple of weeks.
The code signing and provisioning aspect of iOS development is, without a doubt, the worst thing that Apple has ever produced. I’ve been reminded of this because I just updated to OSX 10.7.4 and for some reason all of my provisioning profiles now complain that they can’t find a valid signing identity. An hour or so of googling and button clicking later and I’m admitting defeat for the moment.
As an example of how hateful the process is and how little regard Apple has for its community of developers, here’s a screenshot from their certificate history page:
Yes, those are dates. And yes, they are sorted alphabetically. This from a company that is universally praised for its attention to detail and the ease of use of its products.
Developers! Apple hates you.
It’s been 10 months since the last update, so I figure it’s about time to revive the EarthShakerDS code and finish off the level editor. Changes so far:
I’ve got to make the custom level select on the title screen actually start a level and allow interaction with the file requester in the level editor. Once those are done the game will finally be finished.
Here’s a grab of the new file requester. It isn’t pretty but it’ll work…
If you’ve ever needed to validate an email address, the chances are you used a regex engine and validated the address’ structure against something like this:
^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,4})$
It works well enough for the average case. But what about this email address?
joe+bloggs@example.com
Not so good. You could modify the regex to support the “+” character, but if you read RFC 822 and RFC 5321 you’ll quickly discover that the structure of an email address isn’t just “alphanumeric@alphanumeric.alphanumeric”. Email addresses include a built-in comment system using parentheses, escape characters, quoted sections, “dot-atoms” and more. A regex to correctly parse the entirety of RFC 822 would be huge, and that’s the older, simpler version of an email address.
Once you start really digging into the syntax of an email address, you find that:
Pretty much the only fact you’ll be entirely sure of after your research is that regex is a really bad solution for validating email addresses.
My favourite part of RFC 3696 is where it says these addresses are valid:
Fred\ Bloggs@example.com
"Fred Bloggs"@example.com
This makes sense. The backslash is used to escape a single character, whereas the quotes are used to signify that everything between them should be automatically escaped. One’s really a shortcut for the other. Simple.
However, the errata suggests that this is a mistake, and that this is the correct form:
"Fred\ Bloggs"@example.com
Now we have a backslash system embedded within a quoting system. The former makes the latter entirely superfluous. I think this amendment is probably why so many developers just stick with regex: The standard is crap.
So, you have two choices:
As I’m crazy, here’s an email address parser written in Objective-C. It has some limitations:
On the plus side:
// .h @interface SZEmailValidator : NSObject + (BOOL)isValid:(NSString *)candidate; @end // .m #import "SZEmailValidator.h" struct SZEmailParserState { BOOL quoted : 1; BOOL escaped : 1; BOOL domain : 1; BOOL dot : 1; BOOL followingQuoteBlock : 1; }; @implementation SZEmailValidator + (BOOL)isValid:(NSString *)candidate { unsigned int domainPartStart = 0; unsigned int commentDepth = 0; struct SZEmailParserState state; state.dot = NO; state.quoted = NO; state.escaped = NO; state.followingQuoteBlock = NO; state.domain = NO; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < candidate.length; ++i) { unichar character = [candidate characterAtIndex:i]; if (!state.domain) { // Do not allow characters beyond the ASCII set in the username if (character > 126) return NO; // Do not allow NULL if (character == 0) return NO; // Do not allow LF if (character == 10) return NO; } if (i > 253) { // Do not allow more than 254 characters in the entire address return NO; } // The only characters that can follow a quote block are @ and period. if (state.followingQuoteBlock) { if (character != '@' && character != '.') { return NO; } state.followingQuoteBlock = NO; } switch (character) { case '@': if (state.domain) { // @ not allowed in the domain portion of the address return NO; } else if (state.quoted) { // Ignore @ signs when quoted } else if (state.dot) { // Dots are not allowed as the final character in the local // part return NO; } else { // Swapping to the domain portion of the address state.domain = YES; domainPartStart = i + 1; if (i > 64) { // Do not allow more than 63 characters in the local part return NO; } } // No longer in dot/escape mode state.dot = NO; state.escaped = NO; break; case '(': // Comments only activate when not quoted or escaped if (!state.quoted && !state.escaped) { ++commentDepth; } break; case ')': // Comments only activate when not quoted or escaped if (!state.quoted && !state.escaped) { if (commentDepth == 0) return NO; --commentDepth; } break; case '\\': if (!state.quoted && commentDepth == 0) { // Backslash isn't allowed outside of quote/comment mode return NO; } // Flip the escape bit to enter/exit escape mode state.escaped = !state.escaped; // No longer in dot mode state.dot = NO; break; case '"': if (state.domain && commentDepth == 0) { // " not allowed in the domain portion of the address // outside of a comment return NO; } if (!state.escaped) { // Quotes are only allowed at the start of the local part, // after a dot or to close an existing quote part if (i == 0 || state.dot || state.quoted) { // Remember that we just left a quote block if (state.quoted) { state.followingQuoteBlock = YES; } // Flip the quote bit to enter/exit quote mode state.quoted = !state.quoted; } else { return NO; } } // No longer in dot/escape mode state.dot = NO; state.escaped = NO; break; case '.': if (i == 0) { // Dots are not allowed as the first character of the local // part return NO; } else if (i == domainPartStart) { // Dots are not allowed as the first character of the domain // part return NO; } else if (i == candidate.length - 1) { // Dots are not allowed as the last character of the domain // part return NO; } if (!state.quoted) { if (state.dot) { // Cannot allow adjacent dots return NO; } else { // Entering dot mode state.dot = YES; } } // No longer in escape mode state.escaped = NO; break; case ' ': case ',': case '[': case ']': case 1: case 2: case 3: case 4: case 5: case 6: case 7: case 8: case 9: case 11: case 13: case 15: // These characters can only appear when quoted if (!state.quoted) { return NO; } default: // No longer in dot/escape mode state.dot = NO; state.escaped = NO; // Do not allow characters outside of unicode, numerals, hyphens // and periods in the domain part. We use letterCharacterSet // because we're supporting internationalised domain names. // We don't have to do anything special with the name; that's up // to the email client/server to handle. if (state.domain) { if (![[NSCharacterSet letterCharacterSet] characterIsMember:character] && ![[NSCharacterSet decimalDigitCharacterSet] characterIsMember:character] && character != '-') { return NO; } } break; } } // Do not allow unclosed comments if (commentDepth > 0) return NO; // If we didn't identify a local and a domain part the address isn't valid if (!state.domain) return NO; if (candidate.length == domainPartStart) return NO; if (domainPartStart == 1) return NO; // Validate domain name components NSArray *components = [[candidate substringFromIndex:domainPartStart] componentsSeparatedByString:@"."]; for (NSString *item in components) { // We can't allow a hyphen as the first or last char in a domain name // component if ([item characterAtIndex:0] == '-' || [item characterAtIndex:item.length - 1] == '-') { return NO; } // Items must not be longer than 63 chars if (item.length > 63) return NO; } return YES; } @end
Using TFS as a source control system is an experience akin to having Steve Ballmer repeatedy stamp on your face.
Using TFS on a Mac is like having Ballmer stamp on your face whilst wearing running spikes, calling you names and reminding you that it’s all your fault; you paid him to do it.
If you’re trying to access a JSON web service created using .NET from an iOS device, you’ve probably discovered that dates are produced in a less than useful format:
/Date(1233423345345)/
The rationale for the date format can be found here, but it’s basically a call to the JavaScript Date object constructor. The numeric value represents the number of milliseconds since 1970-01-01.
Below I’ve added a handy Objective-C function that will extract the value and return an NSDate object. Note that we’re losing accuracy by magnitudes as we translate from .NET DateTime objects (which measure time in ticks) to JavaScript Date objects (which measure time in milliseconds) and finally to iOS NSDate objects (which measure time in seconds).
/** * Converts a .NET JSON date in the format "/Date(x)/" to an NSDate object. * @param string The NSString to convert. * @return the NSDate object. */ (NSDate*)jsonStringToNSDate(NSString* string) { // Extract the numeric part of the date. Dates should be in the format // "/Date(x)/", where x is a number. This format is supplied automatically // by JSON serialisers in .NET. NSRange range = NSMakeRange(6, [string length] - 8); NSString* substring = [string substringWithRange:range]; // Have to use a number formatter to extract the value from the string into // a long long as the longLongValue method of the string doesn't seem to // return anything useful - it is always grossly incorrect. NSNumberFormatter* formatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init]; NSNumber* milliseconds = [formatter numberFromString:substring]; [formatter release]; // NSTimeInterval is specified in seconds. The value we get back from the // web service is specified in milliseconds. Both values are since 1st Jan // 1970 (epoch). NSTimeInterval seconds = [milliseconds longLongValue] / 1000; return [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970:seconds]; }
It’s been a while since the last update, but I do have a good excuse. I’ve upped sticks and moved from dingy Birmingham, in the UK, to sunny Littleton, Colorado, in the USA.
So, who’s hiring?
I’ve decided to start blogging about those experiences, but rather than flood this blog with personal posts I’m making a separate blog. But what blogging platform to use? It’s not going to have much traffic, I don’t want to put any admin time into it, I don’t want comments or tags or categories. All I want is to be able to post text as quickly as possible using Markdown.
It would be great if there was a blogging platform for Mercurial like the one available to Github users, but I’ve looked around and haven’t been able to find one. So why not write one?
Here’s my list of requirements:
After a couple of evenings of hacking, here’s the result:
And here’s a demo:
A blog powered by BitBucket and Mercurial. Neat!
I’ve included instructions for getting a BitBlogger instance up and running on AppHarbor, a .NET hosting site that offers a basic freemium option. As BitBlogger doesn’t use any local storage or background events (BitBucket notifies it of changes, rather than BitBlogger needing to poll for updates), it doesn’t need anything above the free package.
I’ve copied bits and pieces of the TwentyEleven theme’s CSS file in order to replicate some of the appearance, so the licence for this application is the GPL rather than my preferred MIT licence. If anyone feels like putting together a simple and very legible theme to replace the current look and feel, I’ll be able to switch it over.
Inspired by Scott Hanselman’s enormous list of tools that he uses, used, or heard of once, here’s three comparatively tiny lists of tools I use every day. The first list is comprised of cross-platform software that I use on both OSX and Windows. The second is OSX-only software and the third is Windows-only software.
I don’t use Linux enough to have a set of tools I recommend. As I’m the only person on the planet to think that Unity is actually a small step in the right direction, even if it does need optimising, my opinion doesn’t count.
DiffMerge and FileZilla make the list over other more advanced programs by virtue of being free and cross-platform. Mercurial triumphs over Git thanks to its first-rate Windows support and its spectacular command line UI. I recommend TortoiseHg for Windows as it is often handy to see at a glance if anything in a repository has changed without firing up PowerShell.
VMWare and VirtualBox both make the list because they have different strengths. VirtualBox is open source, free and cross-platform, but it makes no effort to integrate into the host operating system. VMWare Fusion’s full screen mode means I can three-finger-swipe to switch from OSX to Windows, which is almost magical.
This is what baekdal has to say about Samsung’s inability to design a tablet that doesn’t look like an iPad:
Apple didn’t trademark their design. They trademarked the natural shape a tablet could have. It’s like the New York Times trademarking the shape of the newspaper.
Samsung is saying that there is no other way to design a tablet, and they are right. They could have used different materials, but the overall shape is not Apple’s design. As I demonstrated in this article, the shape of an iPad is the logic progression of simplicity itself.
This is Steve Ballmer, holding a pre-iPad tablet computer running Windows XP:
The similarity to the iPad is uncanny. Why, there’s no other way it could be designed. The sleek, uniform black bezel around the screen, the lack of buttons and surface distractions, the round corners; even the guy in the black turtle neck holding it!
No, wait. It looks nothing like an iPad.
Let’s be honest - all tablets prior to the iPad were junk. They ran desktop operating systems that were entirely inappropriate to the constraints of the hardware (hello Windows 8!). They had terrible battery life. Aesthetically, they were dreadful. However, the iPad isn’t the only possible way to design a tablet. It’s just the best design around at the moment, which is why everyone else is copying it.
All of the ideas Apple suggested Samsung use in their design - non-black surface, hard corners, fat profile, non-centred screen, etc - sound utterly stupid. However, these are precisely the same design ideas that every tablet manufacturer was using before Apple put some thought into the problem. Apple isn’t saying, “You should use these obviously dumb ideas we’ve just come up with so that your product is crippled in comparison to ours.” They’re saying, “You should continue to use the dumb ideas that crippled your products before we showed you how to make tablets that don’t suck.”