Tales from the South Pole

Documenting Icon Composers undocumented icon.json format

Apple’s Icon Composer saves each .icon file as a package containing artwork assets and an icon.json manifest. That JSON controls things like: Layers and groupsLight, dark, and tinted appearancesLiquid Glass blur and translucencyShadows and specular effectsBlend modesLayer positioning and visibilitySolid, automatic, and

New App Launch: Train Your Brain with Kwarks!

Hey everyone! I’m excited to introduce Kwarks — a sleek new puzzle app for iOS that challenges your abstract-reasoning skills in a way even advanced AI finds tough. How it

Travel memoir

Na ryby do Parku Pantanal

Cel podróży: Rio Miranda, Mato Grosso do Sul (Pantanal) "Nie czytaj na głos: armia tu jest, dlatego nie ma mięsa z krokodyla. Carne do Jacare é proibido."Takimi słowami szwagier

MacOS

What's the best dmg file type for distributing MacOS apps online?

There is no one "best" DMG format as each format has its own advantages and disadvantages depending on your specific use case. Here are some of the most common DMG

How to trim mp3 audio files on MacOS. It's free!

Use QuickTime to trim audio files on your Mac without any extra additional software. The feature is baked into your operating system just like a lot of other cool features

wearables

This MiBand watch face will blow your mind

Here's something that I found out today. Well, it really wasn't today but rather in 2020 when the Xiaomi MiBand 4 was the latest smart band from the Chinese electronics

code examples

How to make the first and last elements wrap inwards using flexbox

Flexbox is quite a powerful tool once you get a handle on it. I found the Complete guide to Flexbox missing a particular edge case I needed, illustrated here below.

Apple Watch

What can the Apple Watch do? The complete guide of the Apple Watch features

OK, it's been a while using the Apple Watch and I thought I might say a few words to give it some credit. Overall it's been very good to me.

quick answers

How to debug schema version of sqlite database in moor flutter

Short answers to complex questions. To check the schema version of a moor created database you will need to use a PRAGMA statement. As the documentation puts it: The PRAGMA

Dart

Developer insight: Why does Dart have two constant variable variants?

What's the difference between const and final in dart? TL;DR: const is set at coding-time and pre-compiled; final is assigned at runtime but only once.For a while now,

Node.js

How can I stream my data from Cloudant in Node.js

When it comes to querying data from a database, the frequently spotted attitude of "let's just run this query and it'll be fine" can lead to serious bottlenecks and cause trouble when...

iPad

How to use an iPad as a whiteboard in Zoom?

Most online whiteboarding apps don't give you the freedom of expression and dynamics of a real whiteboard. Use your iPad to tackle this with an easy screen-sharing trick.

React

What the documentation doesn't tell you about the React useEffect hook?

When approaching the useEffect hook in React and to be fair hooks in general, the first thing is to forget what you think you know because you will get confused

ci/cd

Continuous Integration part 2: Setting up Travis checks in Github

Setting up TravisCI status checks on a PR is easy. Here are a few steps to set up your Github repository PRs with quality control.

Node.js

Developer hints: Why do my node.js app ports keep growing?

Working with NodeJS sometimes you get to see some strange things in your dev environment. For example, when working with Cloud Foundry your apps would automatically assign a port number

tutorials

Tutorial: how to unzip files on iOS without extra apps

I noticed a lot of people using some specialised apps just to unzip archives on iOS. I downloaded some zipped fonts from Google Fonts to use with Affinity Photo and

ibm

Preventing your IBM Cloud app from stopping when you deploy is easy!

There's a new feature on IBM Cloud (Bluemix) called Active deploy which makes deploying your app really nice to the user by keeping it running while the app is being

ci/cd

Continuous Integration part 1: Developing and being Agile with Git

This is going to be a brief 3 part CI/CD framework overview using IBM Cloud as the hosting service. In part 3 will create a Continuous Deployment pipeline for

RaspberryPi

How to measure your home temperature with an Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Star I've been playing around with an Sparkfun ESP32 Thing. It's an little IoT board that works with the Arduino SDK. I wanted to set up an envionment that could

ebook-library

I made my kindle go on strike with my Angular app

The first iteration PHP version of the eBook Library has been a life saver when it comes to displaying what I own in a very simple way and getting stuff

pi2d2

A brief love story about the Emotiv Insight and a Pi2D2 mind-controlled robot

As you might know from my previous posts, my pet robot Pi2D2 is a fan of Star Wars so to stick to the theme I decided to become a Jedi.

Spotify

Here's how I wanted to put Spotify in my 1998 Opel Astra

This is building on top of the previous post on the journey to how to get Spotify into my car, you can find the prototype here. So after a few

Spotify

Making my old '98 Opel Astra play Spotify like it's nobody's business

ZSUN Card reader Bought this guy from China recently. It's a pretty neat little device that will hopefully work with my car's radio through its USB port. I'd like to

pi2d2

I've building a mind-controlled Pi2D2 robot. Here's how it works.

Pi2D2 is getting a bit more action with a Firebase connected Python script that can be controlled using a NodeJS app running on a laptop. This is a step towards

kindle

Why would I possibly create my own Kindle book store app?

I bought a new Kindle Voyage recently. It's a great new device with an amazing screen resolution and one killer feature that defeats my old Kindle Touch - it's got