Moving On

Quite a lot has happened since my last blog post.

1. I graduated from Heriot Watt with an Honours degree in Computer Science BSc
2. I moved to Warrinton in England with my girlfriend
3. I got a job as a graduate developer for Entropy Software Solutions

Well technically I moved to Warrington because of the new job but two things didn't really deserve a numbered list. It doesn't look like much now I see but it's been a very busy couple of months. 

At Entropy I work mostly with Microsoft technologies including ASP.net, VB.net, SSIS Packages and Reporting Services. We are interested in working with mobile technologies especially in combination with the systems we currently develop. Whilst it's unlikely my Augmented Reality knowledge will be applicable to business and resource management systems you never know what the client might ask for.

I still have six blog posts drafted waiting for me to have enough time to check them for accuracy and grammar. I know a few of them are out of date now. As well as the blog needing more content the Yahoo Pipe I made years ago seems to have totally borked. I'm on the edge of redoing the whole blog with Umbraco but if I don't have time to post then I almost certainly won't ahve time for that.

Community 8bit Theme Tune

I grabbed this out of the episode to use as a new ringtone. Hopefully NBC won't mind...

Apologies to the actual composer I just stuck Dan Harmon in for speed.

Community 8bit Theme Tune.mp3

How To Use Google Drive, as a drive...

I like to have Google Drive as a drive, or more accurately a partition on my Mac.

It's handy for several reasons partly my OCD, partly organisational (it looks neater in Finder and on the desktop) and it allows me to only have my drive downloaded once across Bootcamp in Windows.

The trouble is that Google Drive creates a folder called "Google Drive" wherever you want it to go leaving you with a partition called "Google Drive" with only one folder in it called again, "Google Drive" I have a method around this.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOU SOMEHOW FORMATTING A WHOLE PARTITION OF DATA!

1. Make sure your current drive has everything backed up correctly, then delete it. It's easier this way.
2. Create your partition I've made mine a bit bigger than my paid for storage incase I ever upgrade
   1. You must call the partition "Google Drive", capital "G" and "D" with a space. The same as the auto generated folder
   2. If you want to make your partition useable in Windows make sure you chose "MS DOS"
   3. Or you can download alternate drivers to make the Mac partition visible in Windows or vice versa but that won't be covered here.
3. Now if you try to select the empty partition as the folder for your Google Drive you'll most likely be told "The folder is not empty". This is because of all the nonsense invisible files that the finder hides from you.
4. To solve this, head to the terminal navigate to your partition you'll need root or SU acess

I used the following Terminal commands to delete the files that were in the way to allow Google Drive to take control of the partition.

sh-3.2# rm -r .MobileBackups/
sh-3.2# rm -r .Spotlight-V100/
sh-3.2# rm -r .Trashes/
sh-3.2# rm -r .VolumeIcon.icns
sh-3.2# rm -r .fseventsd/

That worked for me, if in the long run Google change how Drive works and this method breaks, at least the folder is backed up...

If your as OCD as me you might want to change the partition's icon to match Google Drive. This is also easy:

1. Go to applications and open it in a Finder window.
2. "Get Info" (cmd+I) on Google Drive
3. Do the same for your Google Drive partition
4. Now select the Drive icon a the top left of the window (it should go blue) and copy it with cmd+C
5. You can now select the icon of the drive in the Google Drive partion information window and past with cmd+V
6. Voila

No Data on Giffgaff using Android

Just a quick note to say if you recently swapped to the O2 based network Giffgaff and your Android phone is not connecting to data make sure you have switched to the Giffgaff APN.

 To do this:

1. Go to "Settings" via the app drawer
2. Select "Wireless & Networks" The first option on my device
   
3. Select "Mobile Networks" At the bottom of the list on my device
4. Then select "Access Point Names"
5. Select "Giffgaff"  its at the top of the list for me.

Hofstadter's Law

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

"Worst Case Scenario, You'll be wearing a Bulletproof Vest"

Since Netflix debuted recently in the UK I've been watching a lot of "Mythbusters" and the above quote is one of my favourites. I've always been interested in science especially electronics and mechanics, if I hadn't done Computer Science I'd probably had gone down one of these avenues.

I'm also very much enjoying Netflix, technically it seems perfect it's just the content selection that's disappointing. With media licensing being as complicated as it is, I'm nowhere near a position where I can understand any of it, I'd almost prefer it was a technical problem. While clearly Netflix have a deal with the BBC it seems a shame that Netflix couldn't just operate as an interface for iPlayer allowing users to consume content on all the platforms Netflix is on. I imagine again the issue not technical and again is concerned with licensing and copyright protection issues. Perhaps the news that iPlayer will finally be comming to the Xbox 360 means we'll be watching content through even more alien interfaces soon.

 I've recently started work on an Android application with some friends. We're working on a port of some Windows software for a customer who sells it with hardware. Unfortunately it's unlikely to ever make it to the Android Market. We're using XP-Dev for our project hosting and it's fantastic. I'm a particular fan of their Subversion support and near endless list of task tracking options. I've never worked on a port before and in one day I've already learned a huge amount. The customer doesn't want any modifications to how the application works, used in high workflow environments the user interface is well known and any changes would not be appreciated. It's a totally different mindset to what I'm used to where normally new features are something to get excited about. As the paperwork is quite finalised yet It's probably not safe to disclose our customer but as soon as I have some news I'll post it here as the app is going to be pretty cool.