Daniel Jalkut

Source: planet.taoofmac.com --- 2 days ago
I’ve been pretty swamped these past few weeks helping to care for our newborn son, who arrived on August 8, 2008. That’s 08/08/08 for the numerophiles out there! We’re pretty excited by him, but we’re also experiencing the typical exhaustion that comes along with a new baby. Finally got around to recording another episode of Core Intuition, which is now live and ready for download . In this episode we talk a bit about promotion and how small developers such as ourselves should approach it, and also rap about a few other issues such as how I’m being drawn toward the “baby oriented software” market. Give it a listen, hope you enjoy! ...

Source: planet.taoofmac.com --- 35 days ago
Unit testing is a good idea. Ask any random developer what they think about unit testing and you’re likely to get one of four responses: I don’t know what they are. I love them! You should always use them! I hate them! You should never use them! I appreciate them, but I’m lazy and don’t use them that much. Of these, I have the most respect for the first and fourth. If you don’t know what unit testing is, you can hardly be blamed for failing to employ them. Go learn more about them and maybe you’ll enjoy the rest of this entry a bit more. If you are familiar with them but feel that you don’t use them enough, don’t beat yourself up. You’re probably using them “about the right amount.” That is to say, as much as you need to, in order to alleviate your pains. Groups 2 and 3 could practically be folded into one, because each is about as useless the other. Some things in life demand a strict behavioral code, but programming is not one of them. Some kinds of code bases and programming tasks are extremely conducive to unit testing, and others are not. Use them wherever they make sense, and where they accelerate your ability to improve upon your existing code base. I won’t go into much more about the whens and ifs, but Wil Shipley and Bill Bumgarner have delved deeper into this question, if you’re interested in reading more. Laziness Incubators Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you’ve learned about unit testing, and self-disqualified yo ...

Source: planet.taoofmac.com --- 22 days ago
My buddy and podcasting cohort Manton Reece has announced the release of Wii Transfer 2.6 . His application is apparently a very cool means of interfacing content from your Mac over to your Nintendo Wii. I wish I had more hands-on experience, but unfortunately I do not yet have a Wii of my own to play with! If you love your Wii and your Mac, then this app is probably worth taking a look at. Congratulations, Manton, for finally shipping :) ...

Source: planet.taoofmac.com --- 46 days ago
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of MarsEdit 2.2 , a free update to MarsEdit 2. Generic AtomPub Support AtomPub is a new specification for communication between a blog and a remote editor such as MarsEdit. To use MarsEdit with your AtomPub-compatible blog, select “Other AtomPub Compatible” from the configuration popup in your weblog settings, and enter the service document URL in the RPC URL field. Please consider the AtomPub support somewhat “introductory.” It seems to work fine in my testing, but it hasn’t seen a whole lot of real-world use yet. I’m sure that development will be refined as I get feedback from users about security schemes you want to see supported, etc. Customizable Image Markup Now you can use MarsEdit’s powerful markup macros in the media window. In addition to the built-in macros for image alignment, you can add your own to finely tune the markup that is used when inserting images or other files. Just select “Edit…” from the bottom of the popup menu that, by default, only contains alignment tags. Performance Boost Significant speed improvements to launch time and sorting the table of weblog entries. And More… Support for removing unwanted items from the media catalog. New post table columns for viewing Tags or Post ID. A date editor pull down for easily selecting today’s date. Improved MIME type generation for uploaded files. Blosxom now uses the “Slug” field to specify the file name. Hope you enj ...

Source: planet.taoofmac.com --- 51 days ago
Manton and I sat down to chat about everything under the sun, but inevitably everything turned to Apple’s newly launched AppStore for iPhone and iPod touch. In the podcast I mentioned a funny picture I had seen of many copies of Sudoku installed on the same iPhone. I mistakenly (tentatively, though!) credited Glenn Fleishman as the source of the picture, but in fact it was Dan Frakes, whose article on the subject just appeared in Macworld: Best Sudoku Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch . Here’s the original image he posted to Twitter. Update: Here’s a later picture from Dan, where he’s truly taken Sudoku to the max! Hope you enjoy the show! As always, your feedback is welcomed. ...

Source: planet.taoofmac.com --- 54 days ago
One of the aspects of MarsEdit which appeals to me is the way it hides much of its power and versatility beneath a relatively simple interface. Shimone Samuel recognized the power of MarsEdit’s scriptability and powerful markup macros, and came up with a pretty cool solution for automating footnote generation . Nice work, Shimone! It’s great to see examples like this. As I said, I think it’s nice the way MarsEdit hides much of its functionality away, but the flip side of that is of course that it can be difficult to realize its full potential. Blog posts such as Shimone’s do a good job of showing off its hidden strengths. ...

Source: mjtsai.com --- 33 days ago
Daniel Jalkut: I’m ashamed to admit that this is how many a unit test has been put off. Other laziness incubators include the friction of adding a suitable unit test bundle target to a project, and the difficulty of deciding how to factor your unit tests so that they make sense in the context of your [...] ...

Source: songhacker.com --- 64 days ago
As part of his ongoing series of in depth Mac-centric interviews, Shawn Blanc interviews Daniel Jalkut, maker of the excellent MarsEdit blogging software. Daniel is one of the rare engineers with a music degree and, like myself, a recreational songwriter. Interesting how he mentioned that having worked at Apple lent him “instant credibility” as [...] ...